President Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen said he transferred $130,000 to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels from his home equity line as scrutiny rises over the reported nondisclosure payment from October 2016.
Cohen told ABC News that “the funds were taken from my home equity line and transferred internally to my LLC account in the same bank.” The comments came the same day as a report that Cohen used his Trump Organization email to facilitate the payment.
Daniels sued Trump this week in an effort to void a 2016 nondisclosure agreement that she says prevents her from speaking publicly about an alleged affair with Trump more than a decade ago. Trump allegedly never signed the deal himself, which Daniels’s attorneys say invalidates it.
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The Wall Street Journal reported in January that Cohen arranged the $130,000 payment to Daniels mere weeks before Election Day as part of a deal requiring her to keep silent about the alleged affair.
The White House has denied that Trump ever carried on an affair with Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.
Cohen acknowledged last month that he made the payment, but has insisted that it came from his own personal funds and was not tied to Trump’s presidential campaign.
NBC News reported earlier Friday that Cohen used his Trump Organization email to negotiate and arrange the payment to Daniels, Her attorney, Michael Avenatti, told NBC News that the fact that Cohen used his Trump Organization email instead of his personal one suggests that the money may have come from a Trump Organization bank account.
Cohen rejected Avenatti’s claim, telling ABC News that the emails back up his previous accounts of the payment to Daniels.
“Mr. Avenatti has clearly allowed his 15 minutes of fame to affect his ludicrous conclusions,” Cohen said. “The earth-shattering uncovered email between myself and the bank corroborates all my previous statements; which is I transferred money from one account at that bank into my LLC and then wired said funds to Ms. Clifford’s attorney in Beverly Hills, California.”
“How Mr. Avenatti or the media at large believes this to be ‘breaking news’ is a mystery to me,” he added.