Washington – U.S. President Donald Trump directed hush payments to two women during the 2016 presidential campaign and knew the actions were wrong, his former personal lawyer Michael Cohen said in a television interview that aired on Friday.
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“He directed me to make the payments. He directed me to become involved in these matters,” Cohen, who was sentenced to prison this week over campaign finance and other charges, told ABC News. Trump has denied alleged affairs with the women years ago and offered a shifting defense about the payments. On Thursday tweeted that he never directed Cohen to break the law.
Cohen, speaking in his first interview since he was sentenced on Wednesday, said Trump at the time “was very concerned about how this would affect the election” if voters knew about the alleged affairs and told him to pay off the two women.
The payments aimed to “help (Trump) and his campaign,” he added.
Federal law requires contributions of “anything of value” to a campaign be disclosed, and an individual donation cannot exceed $2,700.
Asked if then-candidate Trump knew the payments were wrong, Cohen told ABC’s “Good Morning America” program: “Of course.”
Cohen on Wednesday was sentenced to three years in prison for the payments as well as unrelated crimes of tax evasion and misleading banks, and two months for lying to Congress about a proposed Trump Tower project in Russia.
If Cohen is the only evidence then prosecutors shouldn’t bother with this. If it doesn’t lead to Russia evidence, Mueller should just hand this information to the federal prosecutors in the Southen District of New York and close up.
Lie. No way Trump knows right from wrong.
“and knew the actions were wrong”
What specific law is broken by paying hush-money?
This is bunk it’s not a campaign finance violation as it has nothing to do with the campaign Trump has been paying hush money for NDAs for decades so it was perfectly legal to pay this out of his own pocket actually it would have been illegal to pay it with campaign funds just like it would be illegal to pay from campaign funds a bonus to employees even if you’re doing it to make yourself look generous for an election the same would be paying off debt it would be illegal to use campaign funds even if the only reason you’re paying it off is for the campaign so your opponent can’t bash you for being in debt
Just because Cohen pled guilty to this non crime at the behest of his Clinton later and prosocuters who want to get Trump doesn’t make it a crime it would be like if Trump told Cohen to go into Walmart and buy him a TV for him to be paid back out of his pocket and Cohen did so and is now pleading guilty to shoplifting doesn’t make that shoplifting admitting to a non crime doesn’t make it one
You can’t believe a thing from a turned witness
#3, the issue is not paying off the ladies. That is not a crime even if you are running for office. The problem is the lawyer used his own money to make the payoff. This was to aid the campaign and so was a campaign contribution. There is no problem with making a campaign contribution of course. But these contributions were not reported. The campaign was taking under-the-table contributions. That is illegal.