06 April 2018 - Trump Denies Knowing of Any Hush Money Paid to Stormy Daniels
Trump says he didn’t know his attorney paid $130,000 to porn star Stormy Daniels
Jenna Johnson, Emma Brown and Frances Stead Sellers (The Washington Post, 05/04/2018)
President Trump said Thursday that he did not know that his personal attorney paid adult-film star Stormy Daniels $130,000 days before the presidential election to prevent her from publicly accusing Trump of having an affair.
In his first public response to questions about the payment, the president said he did not know where his attorney, Michael Cohen, got the money, and he declined to say whether he had ever set up a fund for Cohen to cover such expenses.
Trump’s brief remarks Thursday afternoon raised the stakes for the president on two fronts. Daniels’s attorney immediately suggested that Trump’s version of events would be shown to be untruthful if he is deposed in a lawsuit brought by the adult-film star. And Trump’s lack of knowledge about a hefty payment made in the final weeks of his presidential campaign could have implications for complaints now before the Federal Election Commission and the Justice Department about the arrangement’s legality.
Stormy Daniels's lawyer: Trump just increased strength of our case 'exponentially'
Julia Manchester (The Hill, 05/04/2018)
Stormy Daniels's attorney on Thursday said President Trump helped his client's case "exponentially" by claiming not to have any knowledge of the $130,000 payment his personal attorney made to the porn star days before the 2016 election.
"We very much look forward to testing the truthfulness of Mr. Trump's feigned lack of knowledge concerning the $130k payment as stated on Air Force One. As history teaches us, it is one thing to deceive the press and quite another to do so under oath," Michael Avenatti said in a tweet.
"Good (actually GREAT) things come to those who wait!!!" he added in another. "The strength of our case just went up exponentially. You can't have an agreement when one party claims to know nothing about it."
Stormy Daniels Case Should Be Resolved Privately, Trump’s Lawyers Say
Maggie Astor and Jim Rutenberg (The New York Times, 02/04/2018)
President Trump and a company affiliated with him filed court papers on Monday seeking to force the pornographic film actress Stephanie Clifford to raise her disputes through private arbitration, not lawsuits.
Ms. Clifford, whose stage name is Stormy Daniels, was paid $130,000 to keep quiet about her claims of an affair with Mr. Trump. She sued last month to get out of the nondisclosure agreement she signed in October 2016, alleging that it was void because Mr. Trump had never signed it. That raised the prospect of further embarrassing revelations for a president who has already been rocked by Ms. Clifford’s public statements.
In a motion filed on Monday, Essential Consultants — a shell company established by Mr. Trump’s lawyer Michael D. Cohen to pay Ms. Clifford — asked the United States District Court for the Central District of California to compel Ms. Clifford “to arbitrate any and all disputes arising” from the confidentiality agreement she signed. In a separate document filed on the same day, Mr. Trump formally joined the motion.
Stormy Daniels 60 Minutes Interview: What Did CBS Cut From Broadcast?
Graham Lanktree (Newsweek, 05/04/2018)
A number of sensitive details were cut from adult actress Stormy Daniels’s primetime interview on 60 Minutes last month—including a description of President Donald Trump’s genitals, her lawyer said Wednesday.
“When she sat for that interview, it actually lasted over two hours in length, the actual interview," attorney Michael Avenatti told Megyn Kelly Today.
“There’s a lot of information that was said during that interview that did not make it into the final 60 Minutes,” Avenatti told NBC News’s Megyn Kelly, pointing out only 14 to 16 minutes of the full interview actually made it to air.