House Democrats plan to make President Trump’s alleged involvement in a 2016 scheme to silencetwo women who claimed they hadaffairs with him a major investigativefocus this fall, picking up where federal prosecutors left off in a case legal experts say could have led to additional indictments.
The House Judiciary Committee is preparing to hold hearings and call witnesses involved in hush-money payments to ex-
Playboy model Karen McDougal and adult-film star Stormy Daniels as soon as October, according to people familiar with the plans who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions.
Democrats say they believe there is already enough evidence to name Trump as a co-conspirator in the episode that resulted in his former attorney, Michael Cohen, pleading guilty to two campaign finance charges.
Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), chair of the powerful House Oversight Committee, wants to hear from the Fox News reporter whose bosses refused to let her run a story about Trump’s hush money payments to adult actress Stormy Daniels prior to the 2016 election.
The reporter, Diana Falzone, uncovered the story — but was told it would not run because those in charge of Fox News wanted Donald Trump to win the 2016 election.
MSNBC’s Ari Melber broke the story Thursday night that Congress wanted to hear from Falzone. Melber read on air parts of a letter Cummings sent to Falzone, requesting documents and information related to “women alleging extra marital affairs with President Trump, payments by the President or anyone on behalf of him to silence those people.” The request also seeks any documents about potential campaign finance violations.
Prosecutors won’t likely charge a sitting president, yet have implicated him in a criminal scheme to pay off Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal. What to do then? Go to Congress.
Friday’s in-depth Wall Street Journal report suggests the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Southern District of New York and the FBI appear to possess evidence of Donald Trump’s involvement in a criminal scheme that helped get him elected president. This raises serious questions about what comes next, particularly in light of Trump’s appointment of Matthew Whitaker, a political loyalist, as acting attorney general.
Trump played a central role in hush-money payments made to Karen McDougal and Stephanie Clifford during the 2016 presidential campaign, the Journal reports, adding more detail to the case of Michael Cohen, Trump’s former fixer-lawyerwho pled guilty to federal campaign finance violations in the Southern District in August.
Recall that when Cohen pleaded guilty in federal court, he stated under oath that he had made the payments “in coordination and at the direction of a candidate for federal office”—many assumed that that candidate was Trump, of course. We now know from the Journal that the person who directed Cohen in this criminal scheme was, indeed, Donald Trump. The charging document to which Cohen pled guilty states that he “coordinated with one or more members of the campaign, including through meetings and phone calls, about the fact, nature, and timing of the payments.” The Journal reports that “[t]he unnamed campaign member or members referred to Mr. Trump, according to people familiar with the document.”
The following article by Melanie Schmitz was posted on the ThinkProgress.org website August 30, 2018:
The president was reportedly weighing the idea of buying American Media Inc.’s entire library of negative stories on him.
President Trump Credit: Mark Wilson/Getty Images
President Trump and his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, discussed a plan to prevent the National Enquirer’s parent company from publishing a trove of negative news items about Trump spanning decades, according to a new report from the New York Times.
Just ahead of the 2016 presidential election, Trump and Cohen discussed buying the rights to the story of a woman who claimed to have had an affair with him years earlier, to the tune of $150,000. The woman, former Playboy model Karen McDougal, had previously been paid that amount by American Media Inc., the parent company of the National Enquirer, in a practice known as “catch-and-kill” — essentially, AMI purchased and buried her story, effectively silencing her.
The conversation in which Trump discussed purchasing McDougal’s story from AMI was since leaked to CNN in the form of an audio tape recorded by Cohen himself. However, a new report by The New York Times claims Trump had plans to buy not just McDougal’s story, but also the Enquirer’s entire archive of negative stories about him.
The following article by David A. Fahrenthold and Jonathan O’Connell was posted on the Washington Post website May 16, 2018:
President Trump reported a reimbursement of over $100,000 last year to his personal attorney, Michael Cohen, in new financial disclosure documents. (Reuters)
In new financial-disclosure documents, President Trump reported reimbursing his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, more than $100,000 last year — an apparent reference to the $130,000 that Cohen paid just before the 2016 election, to ensure the silence of an adult-film actress who claimed she’d had an affair with Trump.
When Stormy Daniels’s lawyer tweeted out bank records for President Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen, a whole new web of connections was unfurled. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)
To keep news of a $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels quiet, President Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen created a limited liability company in Delaware called Essential Consultants. Cohen said that he paid $130,000 of his own money into a bank account associated with the company and, from that account, transferred the money to Daniels’s attorney at the time, Keith Davidson.
The following article by Michael D. Shear, Maggie Haberman, Jim Rutenberg and Matt Apuzzo was posted on the New York Times website May 4, 2018:
Pres. Trump had denied in April that he knew of a $130,000 hush payment made to a pornographic film actress who claimed to have had an affair with him. Credit: Al Drago, New York Times
WASHINGTON — President Trump knew about a six-figure payment that Michael D. Cohen, his personal lawyer, made to a pornographic film actress several months before he denied any knowledge of it to reporters aboard Air Force One in April, according to two people familiar with the arrangement.
How much Mr. Trump knew about the payment to Stephanie Clifford, the actress, and who else was aware of it have been at the center of a swirling controversy for the past 48 hours touched off by a television interview with Rudolph W. Giuliani, a new addition to the president’s legal team. The interview was the first time a lawyer for the president had acknowledged that Mr. Trump had reimbursed Mr. Cohen for the payments to Ms. Clifford, whose stage name is Stormy Daniels. Continue reading “Trump Is Said to Have Known of Payment to Stormy Daniels Months Before He Denied It”
Rudolph W. Giuliani said President Trump personally repaid his lawyer the $130,000 that was used to buy Stormy Daniels’s silence about an alleged affair. (Amber Ferguson/The Washington Post)
What many close observers suspected about the Stormy Daniels payment has proved true, despite the Trump team’s best efforts to cover it up: President Trump was behind it, even if he didn’t necessarily know about it.
Rudolph W. Giuliani said President Trump personally repaid his lawyer the $130,000 that was used to buy Stormy Daniels’s silence about an alleged affair. (Amber Ferguson/The Washington Post)
This article has been updated.
It didn’t take former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani long to make his mark after joining President Trump’s legal team. Unfortunately, the mark Giuliani left was on his client.
Rudolph W. Giuliani said President Trump personally repaid his lawyer the $130,000 that was used to buy Stormy Daniels’s silence about an alleged affair. (Amber Ferguson/The Washington Post)
Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York mayor and a recent addition to President Trump’s legal team, said Wednesday night that Trump made a series of payments reimbursing his attorney Michael Cohen for a $130,000 settlement with an adult-film actress — despite Trump’s assertion last month that he was unaware of the payment.
House Democrats plan to make President Trump’s alleged involvement in a 2016 scheme to silence two women who claimed they had affairs with him a major investigative focus this fall, picking up where federal prosecutors left off in a case legal experts say could have led to additional indictments.
