May 2, 2018

Giuliani: Trump Paid Hush Money to Keep Stormy Daniels Quiet

giuliani

Siavosh Hosseini/NurPhoto via ZUMA

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WTF?

President Trump reimbursed Michael D. Cohen, his longtime personal lawyer, for the $130,000 payment that Mr. Cohen has said he made to keep a pornographic film actress from going public just before the 2016 election with her story about an affair with Mr. Trump, according to Rudolph W. Giuliani, one of the president’s lawyers.

Giuliani said this on the Hannity show. According to the Times, it “appears to contradict” what Trump has been saying for the past several months.

Well, no, it doesn’t “appear” to contradict. It just flat out contradicts what Trump has said. It also contradicts what Michael Cohen has said. So somebody is lying here, and there’s no good reason that Giuliani would suddenly volunteer to go on Hannity’s show to lie about this. In fact, he specifically said to Hannity, “I’m giving you a fact that you don’t know.” He’s working for Trump these days, and it’s obvious that Giuliani must have advised Trump that he needs to get out ahead of this. He must be afraid that Cohen has already ratted out Trump.

There was also this fascinating tidbit from Giuliani: “That was money that was paid by his lawyer, the president reimbursed that over the period of several months.” Why would Trump have to reimburse it over several months? Is he really that broke? Did he do it just to humiliate Cohen? Did he do it in $9,999 chunks so it didn’t have to get reported? What’s the deal here?

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

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Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

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