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Thursday, May 3, 2018

Let's Sort This Out

Rudy Giuliani said last night on TV that his client, President Trump, had repaid Michael Cohen for the $130,000 that Cohen gave to Stormy Daniels in 2016 as part of a non-disclosure agreement.  According to Rudy, the repayments came from the President personally via the monthly retainer payments that Trump made to his attorney Cohen.  The money didn't come from the campaign or The Trump Organization.

The usual anti-Trump media has gone wild.  So has Stormy Daniels attorney who never misses the opportunity for an over-the-top comment.  The group is busy trying to twist this into some sort of criminal act by Trump.  Stormy's lawyer says it was "a felony".  The reality, however, is quite different.  Let's sort this out:

1.  It is perfectly legal for someone to pay another person to keep quiet so long as that is not done to prevent someone from giving evidence in a criminal matter (which would be obstruction of justice.)  Trump could properly pay Stormy Daniels not to repeat her claim (which Trump says is false) of a sexual encounter between the two.

2.  It is also perfectly legal for an attorney to advance expenses for a client and then to include those items as disbursements as part of legal bills.  It is a common practice in the legal profession.  In most cases, the disbursements are not for items as large as $130,000, but the size of the payment does not change the nature of the arrangement.  Particularly for someone as wealthy as Trump, a disbursement of this size is not that unusual.

3.  When Cohen was paid back by Trump, it is not clear that the President (or the then president-elect) even knew about those payments.  After all, these payments would have come after the election and Trump's victory, so that he was not likely focused on legal bills from Cohen.  My guess is that his personal staff made the payments as a matter of course.

4.  Cohen, according to consistent statements, was authorized to act as Trump's agent for matter of the sort of the Stormy Daniels claim.  It would seem perfectly likely that Cohen would have finalized the non-disclosure agreement with Stormy without even consulting Trump given that it was just a few weeks prior to the election.

5.  While none of this contradicts any of the prior statements to the press by the President, the nonsense claims by the media to the contrary are silly. 

6.  If the President personally reimbursed Cohen, then all those breathless articles about how Cohen violated election laws were wrong.  This was not an election expenditure, but even if it were, it came from Trump himself who, as most people know, is allowed like any candidate to spend whatever he wants on his own candidacy.

What happened last night is that Rudy Giuliani put out the full story.  This should now recede into the background.

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