Stormy seas may be ahead for Donald Trump! It’s looking pretty Stormy out there for the president! The weather this week in Washington DC is going to be, all together now…
Stop it.
Sorry.
I assume this is something to do with porn star and alleged Trump paramour Stormy Daniels?
It is. How did you guess?
Just a hunch. So what’s happened now?
The former mayor of New York and one-time presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani, who recently joined the president’s legal team, told Fox News’s Sean Hannity on Wednesday night that Trump had paid his attorney Michael Cohen $130,000 for a hush money payoff to Daniels (real name Stephanie Clifford), despite his previous insistance to the contrary.
Hang on. I’ve seen Sean Hannity’s name before linked with this case, haven’t I?
Someone’s been paying attention. Last month, it was revealed in court that Hannity was also a client of Cohen’s. On his show the following day Hannity distanced himself from the attorney, though admittedly not very far, saying: “Let me set the record straight, here’s the truth: Michael Cohen never represented me in any legal matter. I never retained his services. I never received an invoice. I never paid Michael Cohen for legal fees. I did have occasional, brief conversations with Michael Cohen, this great attorney, about legal questions I had.”
Doesn’t this raise serious doubts about Hannity’s journalistic integrity and ability to cover this story in an objective manner?
Only among those lucky enough to be unfamiliar with Hannity’s particular body of work. He is to journalistic integrity what deep-fried Mars bars are to a healthy lifestyle. He’s a hack.
So what did Giuliani say?
He’s said a lot over the past 24 hours. On Wednesday, Giuliani told Hannity that the payment to Daniels was “funneled through a law firm, and the president repaid it.”
“That was money that was paid by his lawyer … the president reimbursed that over the period of several months,” Giuliani continued.
But I thought Trump has denied all knowledge of that payment?
He has, strenuously, until now, telling reporters in April that he didn’t know about the payment and also that he didn’t know from where Cohen might have got the money. On Thursday morning, on the Fox News morning show Fox & Friends, of which Trump is an avid viewer, Giuliani muddied the waters, claiming Trump “didn’t know the full details until we knew the details of it, which was a week ago”. But not even the usually Trump-friendly Fox & Friends were buying it; presenter Ainsley Earhardt told Giuliani pointedly that “it sounds like the story is changing.”
But, also on Thursday morning, Trump sent off a series of near-incoherent tweets confirming the key point of Giuliani’s comments to Hannity the previous night: that Trump had paid Cohen the $130,000 to pay off Daniels. That’s kinda big; it is the first time he has acknowledged paying off women who allege relations with him (in his tweets, Trump described the actual accusation of an affair as “false and extortionist”).
Daniels is not the only one in that situation; Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model, has also claimed to have had a relationship with Trump, and was paid $150,000 for her silence. And it raises questions about how much Trump knew about the other allegations Daniels makes, including that she was at one point physically threatened not to speak to the press.
So Trump lied? How unlike him.
The tweets were riddled with spelling errors – he claims that campaign money played “no roll” in the payment to Daniels – which is usually an indication that the president is rattled. Or possibly hungry.
But they have a weird legalistic cadence that make it seem like the content of the tweets were being dictated to him by his lawyers, presumably led by Giuliani.
See for yourself:
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. These agreements are…..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 3, 2018
…very common among celebrities and people of wealth. In this case it is in full force and effect and will be used in Arbitration for damages against Ms. Clifford (Daniels). The agreement was used to stop the false and extortionist accusations made by her about an affair,……
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 3, 2018
…despite already having signed a detailed letter admitting that there was no affair. Prior to its violation by Ms. Clifford and her attorney, this was a private agreement. Money from the campaign, or campaign contributions, played no roll in this transaction.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 3, 2018
So what does all this mean?
It signals a change in Trump’s legal strategy, at least. The real jeopardy for Trump in this case has been whether Cohen paying off Daniels just before the election could amount to an illegal campaign contribution.
Now, Trump’s new team of attorneys – his long-time lawyer and owner of a truly fabulous moustache Ty Cobb quit the team on Wednesday, soon after Giuliani joined – appear to have concluded that admitting Trump reimbursed Cohen for the hush money paid to Daniels is the only way to beat the rap for campaign finance violation.
In an interview with the New York Times just after his Fox News appearance, Giuliani seemed to confirm that this was indeed the strategic goal, saying “that removes the campaign finance violation, and we have all the documentary proof for it”. In an intriguing detail, he also said that the total amount paid to Cohen was between $460,000 and $470,000, raising the possibility that more women, as yet unknown, were also paid for their silence.
Surely Trump can’t be happy about having to admit that.
No, one would imagine not. It could certainly mean trouble for his relationship with First Lady Melania, who has been increasingly frosty towards Trump in public appearances.
It is almost impossible to watch this video from his appearance this weekend alongside French president Emmanuel Macron’s visit – in which Trump attempts to hold Melania’s hand and is coldly rebuffed – without feeling a tinge of something approaching pity.
Alongside the schadenfreude, that is.
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