The Wall Street Journal reported that President Donald Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen recorded a two-hour conversation with CNN’s Chris Cuomo about the alleged payment to porn star Stormy Daniels.
Cohen told Cuomo that he, not Trump, handled the $130,000 payoff to Stormy Daniels.
From The Wall Street Journal:
In the nearly two-hour conversation with CNN reporter Chris Cuomo, which the people said appears to have been surreptitiously recorded by Mr. Cohen, the former Trump lawyer discussed at length the payment he arranged in October 2016, a month before the presidential election, to Stephanie Clifford, known professionally as Stormy Daniels.“I did it on my own,” Mr. Cohen said of the payment, according to the people familiar with the matter. The conversation took place after The Wall Street Journal in January revealed that Mr. Cohen had arranged the payment to Ms. Clifford.
The sources told WSJ that Cohen reassured Cuomo a few times during the phone conversation that he was not recording the interview:
During the conversation with Mr. Cuomo, Mr. Cohen assured the reporter that he wasn’t running a tape, according to the people familiar with the matter. He told Mr. Cuomo he was placing the phone in his desk drawer and that the conversation was off the record. The phone appeared to record the entire conversation, the people said.It isn’t clear whether Mr. Cohen makes any indication on the tape that he arranged the payment to Ms. Clifford in order to bolster Mr. Trump’s campaign. If Mr. Cohen did pay Ms. Clifford to help the candidate’s chances of being elected, he and the campaign may have violated campaign-finance law by making an in-kind contribution exceeding the legal limit and by not disclosing the contribution.At one point, asked if the payment could be construed as an in-kind contribution, Mr. Cohen responds: “It wasn’t for the campaign. It was for him,” referring to Mr. Trump, according to a person familiar with the matter.
This report comes less than 24 hours after Cuomo reported on a taped conversation between Trump and Cohen.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY