Some of the president\u2019s advisers said they were surprised by the assertion that he reimbursed a lawyer who paid hush money to a porn actress who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump.<\/b>
\nWASHINGTON \u2014 President Trump\u2019s new legal team made a chaotic debut as Rudolph W. Giuliani, who was tapped recently to be one of the president\u2019s lawyers, potentially exposed his client to legal and political danger by publicly revealing the existence of secret payments to Michael D. Cohen, the president\u2019s personal lawyer.
After he moved into the White House, the president began paying Mr. Cohen $35,000 a month, Mr. Giuliani said, in part as reimbursement for a $130,000 payment that Mr. Cohen made to a pornographic film actress to keep her from going public about an affair she said she had with Mr. Trump. The president confirmed he made payments to Mr. Cohen in a series of Twitter posts on Thursday morning.
The explosive revelation, which Mr. Giuliani said was intended to prove that Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen violated no campaign finance laws, prompted frustration and disbelief among the president\u2019s other legal and political advisers, some of whom said they feared the gambit could backfire.
Legally, the failure to disclose the payments could be a violation of the Ethics in Government Act of 1978, which requires that federal officials, including Mr. Trump, report any liabilities of more than $10,000 during the preceding year. Mr. Trump\u2019s last disclosure report, which he signed and filed in June, mentions no debt to Mr. Cohen.
Politically, Mr. Giuliani\u2019s remarks \u2014 made in television appearances and interviews \u2014 raised questions about the president\u2019s truthfulness and created a firestorm at the White House, where aides were caught off guard and furiously sought to deflect questions they could not answer. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said she had been unaware of the payments before Mr. Giuliani\u2019s interviews.
\u201cEveryone is wondering, what in the world is he doing?\u201d said George Arzt, a longtime New York Democratic consultant who has known Mr. Giuliani for decades. \u201cI would not have sent out Rudy to talk about the investigation. But Trump likes chaos and Trump just added to the chaos.\u201d
By the end of the day, the president and his advisers had done little to clarify the confusion that Mr. Giuliani had set in motion a night earlier.
Mr. Giuliani did not consult every member of the president\u2019s legal team, or the network of lawyers around Washington whose clients have been entangled in Mr. Trump\u2019s legal disputes, according to several people close to the team. Emmet T. Flood, a lawyer hired by Mr. Trump on Wednesday, was not involved in Mr. Giuliani\u2019s plans to reveal the payments to Mr. Cohen during an interview with Sean Hannity on his Fox News program, one of the people said.
The abrupt disclosure \u2014 which even caught Mr. Hannity, a confidant of the president\u2019s, by surprise \u2014 set off a flurry of calls between Mr. Trump\u2019s lawyers as they sought to determine whether Mr. Giuliani meant to reveal the president\u2019s reimbursement. Witnesses and lawyers around Washington scoured transcripts, watched television clips and called each other in an effort to grasp the consequences of what Mr. Giuliani had said.
The president\u2019s other lawyers ultimately determined that Mr. Giuliani had consulted with Mr. Trump, people close to them said, but were left speechless about why he decided to make the disclosure in such a high-profile way and without any strategy to handle the fallout.
Mr. Giuliani recognized the situation was problematic, two people close to him said, because Mr. Trump had previously said on Air Force One that he was unaware of the hush payments to Stephanie Clifford, the actress who performs as Stormy Daniels. However, Mr. Trump and his aides see lying to or misleading the news media as far less troublesome than lying to investigators, they said.
Even some of the president\u2019s own advisers said they were skeptical of Mr. Giuliani\u2019s statements that Mr. Cohen entered into a settlement, made payments to a pornographic film actress and was reimbursed by the president all without Mr. Trump\u2019s knowing why.
Mr. Giuliani\u2019s disclosure is a sign of how Mr. Trump\u2019s reshuffled legal team \u2014 which now includes a highly paid Washington lawyer, a famous former mayor, a constitutional lawyer who specializes in religious cases and former federal prosecutors \u2014 will function in the coming weeks as they sort out who takes the lead on representing the president.
Mr. Giuliani has said he is the lead lawyer dealing with the special counsel\u2019s investigation in Washington. But his statements on Wednesday night related to the continuing investigation in New York that is examining the conduct of Mr. Cohen. People close to the president are concerned that Mr. Trump and Mr. Giuliani may create more problems for themselves if they consult only with each other and leave out the other lawyers who may know more about the nuances of the cases.
Mr. Trump faces a two-front battle with the Justice Department: one investigation in New York into Mr. Cohen and the special counsel investigation in Washington.
Whoever runs the president\u2019s legal defenses will almost certainly adopt a more aggressive strategy than the previous team, which was led by the Washington lawyers John Dowd and Ty Cobb.
Despite the president\u2019s desire to take on the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, and the Justice Department, Mr. Dowd and Mr. Cobb persuaded Mr. Trump to buy into their strategy of cooperation. The more helpful the president was, Mr. Dowd and Mr. Cobb told him last year, the more likely the investigation would conclude by year\u2019s end.
Instead, the investigation has intensified, and the president has concluded that approach was a mistake, according to people close to him. Convinced that the investigation is a growing threat to his presidency, he has resorted to his initial inclination to fight.
Mr. Trump appears to hope that Mr. Giuliani, a like-minded political street fighter from New York, will aid his combative approach. Mr. Giuliani\u2019s comments on Wednesday and Thursday were an attempt to do just that.
His aggression carried risks. Besides revealing that the president had reimbursed Mr. Cohen, Mr. Giuliani appeared to admit that the payment to Ms. Clifford just before Election Day in 2016 was made because of concerns about the coming vote. That could be used to argue that it was an illegal campaign contribution.
\u201cImagine if that came out on October 15,2016, in the middle of the, you know, last debate with Hillary Clinton,\u201d Mr. Giuliani said on the Fox News program \u201cFox & Friends.\u201d \u201cCohen didn\u2019t even ask. Cohen made it go away. He did his job.\u201d
Violating campaign finance laws can be serious. John Edwards, a former Democratic senator and presidential hopeful, was charged with corruption for his role in trying to hide details of his affair with a videographer during his 2008 bid for the White House. Mr. Edwards\u2019s trial ended in an acquittal on one count with the jury unable to reach a verdict on five others.
Mr. Giuliani\u2019s comments also raised fresh questions about the president\u2019s relationship with Mr. Cohen. As Mr. Giuliani told it, Mr. Cohen entered into a legal agreement with Ms. Clifford and paid her without Mr. Trump\u2019s knowledge. Mr. Giuliani described that as commonplace, saying he performed similar services for his own clients. But legal ethics experts said such an arrangement was highly unusual and would only expose Mr. Cohen to new questions.
Lawyers are required to keep their clients fully informed of their activities and are generally prohibited from advancing money to or on behalf of their clients, said Deborah L. Rhode, a scholar on legal ethics at Stanford Law School. \u201cThis is a guy who says he\u2019ll take a bullet for the president,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd what they\u2019re giving him is the legal ethics equivalent of a bullet.\u201d
\u201cGiuliani thinks he\u2019s serving President Trump\u2019s interest,\u201d she said. \u201cPresident Trump\u2019s interest is not the same as Michael Cohen\u2019s interest.\u201d
In his tweets on Thursday, Mr. Trump contradicted his earlier statements that he knew of no payment to Ms. Clifford. Mr. Trump said he paid a monthly retainer to Mr. Cohen and suggested that the payment to the actress could not be considered a campaign contribution.
Government watchdog groups warned that willfully violating the financial disclosure laws can be punished by a fine of up to $50,000 and a year in prison. Although federal officials who lie on the forms are also typically charged with other, more serious offenses such as bribery or fraud, more than 20 officials or former officials have been charged in the past 12 years with making false statements to federal officials, a felony offense. An Environmental Protection Agency official who failed to report a source of income on the form, for instance, was convicted and sentenced to probation.
\u201cMr. Giuliani did his client no favors,\u201d said Norman L. Eisen, the chairman of the good-government group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
Mr. Cohen had worked for Mr. Trump for a decade and has said he would \u201ctake a bullet\u201d for him. Mr. Trump, however, treated Mr. Cohen poorly over the years, people familiar with their relationship have said.
Ms. Clifford is suing Mr. Cohen to try to be released from the nondisclosure agreement. And Mr. Cohen is under federal investigation into possible bank fraud, raising concerns in the president\u2019s inner circle that Mr. Trump\u2019s longtime personal lawyer will cooperate with the government. Federal agents raided Mr. Cohen\u2019s office and home last month and seized documents that included information about payments to Ms. Clifford.
Mr. Cohen recently invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in Ms. Clifford\u2019s lawsuit.<\/p>\n

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