President Trump’s longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen may have very well been telling the truth when he told the New York Times that he paid former porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000 out of his own pocket and without reimbursement from the president. However, that may have been because Cohen had a hard time getting Trump to pay him back, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
According to WSJ, last October Daniels’ reps were threatening to turn down a payout guaranteeing her silence about an alleged 2006 affair between her and the then-Apprentice host. Cohen reportedly blew two deadlines to reach an agreement with Daniels because he had trouble getting in touch with Trump to secure the funds. Given that his client was in the final stretch of an election, Cohen paid Daniels’s lawyer out of his own pocket through Essentials Consultants LLC, a company he created for the transaction. Banking records obtained by WSJ show Daniels received the payment on October 27, less than two weeks before the election.
Apparently, Trump didn’t think paying his fixer back was a priority as sources claimed that Cohen was complaining after the election that Trump hadn’t reimbursed him. In fairness, it’s not like Trump ever had a stellar reputation when it came to paying back debts. Still, that’s a hell of a loose end for Trump to leave unattended while preparing to assume the country’s highest office. It’s unknown if Cohen was ever paid back.
The transaction had been flagged as suspicious by Cohen’s bank and reported to the Treasury Department and launched an internal investigation of the payment one year later.
When asked for comment by WSJ, Cohen sent back an email simply consisting of the phrase “Fake News.” Both Daniels’s and Cohen’s banks declined to divulge any information about their clients.
