President Donald Trump and his newest lawyer, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, disclosed that Trump had reimbursed his personal attorney Michael Cohen for the $130,000 hush payment to adult-film star Stormy Daniels without informing White House staff first, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Giuliani admitted on Wednesday that Trump reimbursed Cohen for the payment after weeks of White House statements claiming the President knew nothing about the arrangement which caught many in the White House off-guard but was planned in advance by Giuliani and the President, according to the Journal.
“That was money that was paid by his lawyer, the way I would do, out of his law firm funds or whatever funds, it doesn’t matter. The president reimbursed that over a period of several months,” Giuliani told Fox’s Sean Hannity on Wednesday.
That interview shocked the White House and left the West Wing “completely frozen,” one aide told the Journal.
“People in the White House are a little concerned about what looks like the roller coaster ride ahead,” another White House official told the newspaper. Giuliani joined the President’s legal team in April.
Meanwhile, former Trump aide David Bossie called Giuliani’s admission “media savvy” in an interview with the Journal.
“You get a lot of different value added with Rudy Giuliani. You get his legal and intellectual abilities, but you also get his media savvy,” Bossie says.
Trump on Thursday sent a series of tweets to clarify his arrangement with Cohen after Giuliani’s interview, stating that the campaign funds had “no role” in the payment to Daniels. Critics have questioned whether the $130,000 payment to Daniels constituted an unreported campaign donation.
“Mr. Cohen, an attorney, received a monthly retainer, not from the campaign and having nothing to do with the campaign, from which he entered into, through reimbursement, a private contract between two parties, known as a non-disclosure agreement, or NDA. Money from the campaign, or campaign contributions, played no roll in this transaction,” Trump tweeted.
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