Donald Trump’s recently-hired lawyer Rudy Giuliani offered up several surprises in an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, and revealed that Trump had known of and financed a payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels.
Giuliani’s unexpected admissions last night (May 2) also included a reference to Trump lawyer Michael Cohen taking care of “things like this,” which could indicate there may be more payments to people with non-disclosure agreements out there.
But he did know about the general arrangement, that Michael would take care of things like this. Like, I take care of this with my clients. I don’t burden them with every single thing that comes along. These are busy people.
A former advisor has also said Trump made multiple payoffs to women he was involved with so they wouldn’t talk about their situation before the 2016 election: “Look, Kasowitz has known [Trump] for twenty-five years. Kasowitz has gotten him out of all kinds of jams,” Michael Wolf reports Stephen Bannon saying in The Fire and the Fury, referring to Trump’s private lawyer Marc Kasowitz. “Kasowitz on the campaign—what did we have, a hundred women? Kasowitz took care of all of them.”
Former Playboy playmate Karen McDougal said she had an affair with Trump in the summer of 2006. McDougal had an agreement with National Enquirer publisher American Media not to talk about the affair that was cancelled this April.
Paid non-disclosure agreements like Cohen’s to Stormy Daniels are “very common among celebrities and people of wealth,” Trump tweeted Thursday morning, seemingly admitting that he backed the payment while continuing to deny he had an affair.