Ryan: I haven’t put a second’s thought into Stormy Daniels controversy

Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) on Thursday said reports that President Trump’s personal lawyer paid adult-film star Stormy Daniels “hush money” to keep quiet about an alleged affair between the two is “not on my radar screen.”

“I haven’t put a second of thought into this. It’s just not on my radar screen,” Ryan said when asked about the payment during an event in Atlanta to speak with Home Depot employees about the recently passed Republican tax law.

A reporter had pointed out to Ryan that Rep. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.) on Wednesday called the allegations of the payment to Daniels “a big deal.” Ryan was asked if he agreed with that assessment.

{mosads}Sanford, who faced his own scandal over an extramarital affair in 2009, was the first Republican to publicly comment on the alleged affair since Daniels filed a lawsuit alleging a nondisclosure agreement with Trump is void. Sanford added that he believes Republicans would react differently if a Democrat had been accused of the same things.

Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, is arguing that Trump himself never signed the agreement, and that his lawyer, Michael Cohen, violated the deal by acknowledging that he paid her.

Cohen has not acknowledged what the payment was for, and the White House has denied that Trump had an affair with Daniels.

The Wall Street Journal reported in January that Cohen had paid Daniels $130,000 ahead of the November 2016 presidential election in exchange for her silence about the alleged affair.

Cohen later acknowledged that he did, in fact, pay Daniels the money, but insisted it came out of his own bank account and did not violate campaign finance rules.