Rudolph Giuliani, a member of President Trump’s legal team, said on Fox News on Wednesday that Mr. Trump reimbursed Michael D. Cohen for the payment.
Rudolph W. Giuliani said on Wednesday that President Trump reimbursed his personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, for a payment that Mr. Cohen has said he made to Stephanie Clifford, a pornographic film actress widely known by her stage name, Stormy Daniels. The payment of $130,000 was to keep her from speaking publicly before the 2016 election about an alleged sexual encounter with Mr. Trump.
Mr. Giuliani, a member of the president’s legal team, made the statement during an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News.
[ Read our article about the interview.]
Below is a transcript of the exchange.
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SEAN HANNITY: My question is, are you concerned within the process of this, we did discover that a foreign national, Christopher Steele, was paid through Fusion GPS, used Russian sources that not only weren’t verified, but were debunked — are you concerned that was paid for, to manipulate the American people in the lead-up to an election?
RUDOLPH W. GIULIANI: Isn’t that closer to the mandate than Michael Cohen?
HANNITY: Why isn’t that happening? Where’s Mueller on that, sir?
GIULIANI: Having something to do with paying some Stormy Daniels woman $130,000? Which, I mean, is going to turn out to be perfectly legal. That money was not campaign money. Sorry, I’m giving you a fact now that you don’t know. It’s not campaign money. No campaign finance violation.
HANNITY: They funneled it through a law firm.
GIULIANI: They funneled through a law firm, and the president repaid it.
HANNITY: Oh. I didn’t know that. He did.
GIULIANI: Yep.
HANNITY: There’s no campaign finance law.
GIULIANI: Zero. Just like every — Sean, Sean —
HANNITY: So this decision was made by —
GIULIANI: Everybody was nervous about this from the very beginning. I wasn’t. I knew how much money Donald Trump put into that campaign, and I said, “$130,000? He could do a couple of checks for $130,000.”
When I heard of Cohen’s retainer for $130,000, he was doing no work for the president. I said, “Well, that’s how he’s repaying it, with a little profit and a little margin for paying taxes for Michael.
HANNITY: But you know the president didn’t know about this?
GIULIANI: Ah, he didn’t know about the specifics of it, as far as I know. But he did know about the general arrangement, that Michael would take care of things like this. Like, I take care of this with my clients. I don’t burden them with every single thing that comes along. These are busy people.
