Donald Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen said that he paid $130,000 to an adult film actor who with Trump in 2006.
Cohen said in a statement to the New York Times that he was not reimbursed by the Trump Organization or the Trump campaign for the payment to Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.
Cohen wrote: “The payment to Ms Clifford was lawful, and was not a campaign contribution or a campaign expenditure by anyone.”
Responding to the New York Times story, and a separate report on the Daily Beast saying Cohen was writing a book, Clifford’s manager Gina Rodriguez said Clifford now believes she is free to speak about the alleged encounter, because the stories invalidated a non-disclosure agreement.
Everything is off now, and Stormy is going to tell her story,” Rodriguez said.
According to the New York Times, Cohen said he had paid the money out of his own pocket, describing it as a “private transaction”. The payment has been previously reported by the Wall Street Journal as being made through a limited liability company set up by Cohen.
Cohen told the New York Times he had delivered a similar statement to the Federal Election Commission in response to a complaint filed by Common Cause, a government watchdog group.
Common Cause had asked the FEC to investigate the source of the $130,000 payment and determine whether it represented an excessive campaign contribution. Cohen told the NYT: “The allegations in the complaint are factually unsupported and without legal merit.”
The Wall Street Journal reported in January that Cohen had arranged the payment to Clifford in October 2016 to keep her from publicly discussing the alleged sexual encounter during the presidential campaign.
A week later, In Touch magazine published a 2011 interview with Clifford in which she claimed she and Trump had a sexual encounter after meeting at a golf tournament in Lake Tahoe, Nevada, a year after Trump’s marriage to Melania.
At the end of January, Daniels said in a statement that the alleged affair never occurred. But in a TV appearance the same day, Daniels appeared to disown the statement, saying she didn’t know where it came from and the signature didn’t look like hers.