Stormy Daniels Payoff: 5 Things To Clear Your Confusion

WASHINGTON, DC — If you were already confused about the legal wrangling surrounding the Stormy Daniels mess, you may have awoken even more so Thursday. On a news talk show the night before, Rudy Giuliani, a newly minted member of President Trump’s legal team, contradicted his boss on earlier statements about a $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels a month before the 2016 election.

Giuliani told Fox News host Sean Hannity that Trump had reimbursed his personal attorney, Michael Cohen, for the hush money paid to Stephanie Clifford, who performs as Stormy Daniels, to keep her quiet about her claims she and Trump had a sexual affair in 2006. But, Giuliani said, Trump “didn’t know the specifics of it, as far as I know.”

“But he did know the general arrangement, that Michael would take care of things like this, like I take care of things like this with my clients,” he said. “I don’t burden them with every single thing that comes along. These are busy people.”

On Thursday, the former New York City mayor clarified his remarks to align more closely with the president’s statements. He told Fox News the money Trump paid to Cohen was for unspecified “expenses,” but the president didn’t know it was to pay Daniels to keep quiet until about 10 days ago.

All of this contradicts what Cohen said last winter after the Stormy Daniels story broke. As Trump’s fix-it-man, he claimed to have acted on his own when he bought the porn star’s silence, and the president knew nothing about it.

The scandal, first reported by The Wall Street Journal in January, has embroiled the Trump administration in questions about whether the payoff violated campaign finance laws. Here are answers to five questions to help clear your confusion:

How has Trump’s explanation changed?

Last month, Trump said he didn’t know about any payment. Responding to questions about the FBI raid on Cohen’s office last month, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that Cohen represented him in a deal to buy the porn star’s silence. When asked where they money came from, Trump responded, “I don’t know.”

On Thursday, in a series of stunning tweets, he said that he had reimbursed Cohen for negotiating a non-disclosure agreement and $130,000 settlement with Clifford, but that it didn’t come from campaign funds.

Non-disclosure agreements are “very common among celebrities and people of wealth,” he tweeted.

“In this case it is in full force and will be used in Arbitration for damages against Ms. Clifford (Daniels),” Trump tweeted. “The agreement was used to stop the false and extortionist accusations made by her about an affair, despite already having signed a detailed letter admitting that there was no affair. Prior to its violation by Ms. Clifford and her attorney, this was a private agreement. Money from the campaign, or campaign contributions, played no roll in this transaction.”

Does the payoff violate campaign finance laws?

One of the looming questions in the Stormy Daniels saga is whether the payoff came from personal or campaign funds.

Giuliani said unequivocally on Fox that the payoff was “perfectly legal” because it was not made with campaign money.

“Sorry, I’m giving you a fact now that you don’t know,” Giuliani said. “It’s not campaign money. No campaign violations.” He said the payments, made over a series of months, were “funneled through a law firm, and the president repaid it.”

Later in the interview, Giuliani said: "That was money that was paid by his lawyer, the way I would do, out of his law firm funds or whatever funds — it doesn't matter — and the president reimbursed that over the period of several months."

He also said campaign finance violations typically result in a fine, “not this big stormtroopers coming in and breaking down his apartment and breaking down his office” — a reference to the FBI raid on Cohen’s office.

Do the new revelations exonerate Trump?

Not necessarily. It could still constitute an illegal loan by Cohen that the Trump campaign failed to report. The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a complaint with the Justice Department and Office of Government Ethics asking them to investigate whether Trump “knowingly and willfully failed to report this potential liability.”

In a similar complaint with the Justice Department and Federal Election Commission, Common Cause said the payoff was a campaign-related expense and therefore an illegal in-kind contribution to Trump’s campaign.

If it’s determined the payoff was an unreported campaign loan, that could put the Trump campaign in violation of campaign-finance laws.

What’s behind Giuliani’s interview and Trump’s tweets?

One theory is the FBI uncovered damaging information about the payoff in raids last month on Cohen’s office, home and hotel rooms, and Giuliani went to on Fox News to get ahead of a story that could widen the president’s credibility gap.

Washington Post opinion columnist Jennifer Rubin wrote Thursday that particularly in light of Trump’s tweets Thursday, “it is likely that Trump and Giuliani believe the raid … turned up evidence of the repayment.”

“They therefore decided to get out ‘ahead’ of the disastrous news, even if it revealed the president had lied about the payment,” she wrote.

Does any of this affect special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe?

At the least, the latest developments further expose the Trump administration’s casual relationship with facts, which could bolster any obstruction of justice charges Mueller may be contemplating.

Giuliani, who appears to be taking the lead as Mueller’s Russia investigation reaches closer to Trump, told Fox News that Trump fired former FBI director James Comey last year “because Comey would not, among other things, say that he wasn’t a target” of the probe.

That’s the latest explanation given for firing Comey. Initially, Trump said he fired Comey over his handling of the investigation into Democratic rival Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while secretary of state. Later, he said in an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt that he was thinking of “this Russia thing.”

As Giuliani explained it to Fox, Trump agreed to the Holt interview “to explain to the American people the president was not the target of the investigation.”

The raid on Cohen’s office could assist in the probe. He’s not just Trump’s personal attorney. For nearly a decade he was a lead negotiator for The Trump Organization in foreign business deals, including some in Russia that caught the attention of Mueller’s team and were featured prominently in Christopher Steele’s notorious dossier.

Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images News/Getty Images: 2016 file