Stormy Daniels: Trump discloses payment to reimburse lawyer

"He''ll get his facts straight," Trump stipulated of his longtime friend on Friday morning, before adding: "There has been a lot of misinformation. I say, You know what? Learn before you speak. It's a lot easier."

After vehemently denying that any payment had been made to Stormy Daniels, followed by the denial that any reimbursement had occurred, even throwing his friend and attorney Rudy Giuliani under the bus -- BBC reports Trump's eventual disclosure of the payment to the porn star prompted today's letter from OGE (Office of Government Ethics) to the DoJ Deputy A.G. Rosenstein regarding opening a new investigation.

The head of the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) wrote in a letter that "the payment made by Mr Cohen is required to be reported as a liability".

In his letter to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, the OGE acting director says he is sending the president's latest financial disclosure and last year's one.

The ethics chief writes to Mr Rosenstein that "you may find the disclosure relevant to any inquiry you may be pursuing".

The deputy attorney general is overseeing the Department of Justice investigation into whether Trump aides colluded with alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential election.

The Stormy Daniels payment is a potential legal problem for the president because it could be seen as an illegal campaign contribution.

BBC News


Excerpt from the letter:

Today I certified President Trump's financial disclosure report signed on May 15, 2018 (for calendar year 2017). OGE has concluded that, based on the information provided as a note to part 8, payment made by Mr. Cohen is required to be reported as a liability.

PDF Letter from OBE to DoJ

Looks like it was a "Lump Sum"

😃🚬

a reply to: Kharron

Trump lied again but that’s just another day in Trumps America. Lying about cheating on your wife only counts if you’re being grilled about it by Congress to his supporters, and if you’re a Democrat.

a reply to: Swills

And this is even deeper than that. That president never made any payments to conceal it, never lied to the government on financial disclosures.

With Clinton, it was a matter of disgracing the office of the president by lying under oath, during the investigation.

With Trump, it goes far beyond that... FinCEN (IRS), DoJ, OGE... everyone will be involved here as there are financial crimes on top of the lying part.

It's too early to know how any of this will pan out. My fear is that the fallout from all this will divide the people even more and my gut tells me that has been the plan all along.

For the record, I don't care what Trump's penis does. Or what him and his wifes sex life arrangements are.

Get the fn taxes for small biz and the middle class back to equal, or as it was intended less than these scummy corporations tax rates, get rid of property tax, drop 90% of the laws and get this country back to the free country it once was or gtfo of the way.

Or, we can continue to watch Days of Our Lives into a prison planet slave hell.

Trump paid his lawyer, so what, all rich people pay their lawyers regularly in lump sums not for individual things.

Maybe you paid your McDonald's cashier and after their shift they cashed their paycheck then went out and got busted for drugs....guess that makes you a drug dealer under this Lefty Progressive logic.

originally posted by: xuenchen
Looks like it was a "Lump Sum"

😃🚬

Or maybe possible a "Pump Sum"

a reply to: Kharron

My fear is that the fallout from all this will divide the people even more and my gut tells me that has been the plan all along.

My thoughts as well, Trump is only a means to an end. The trenches have been dug and once he is impeached (which is what I'm guessing was the plan all along) his supporters will riot in the streets (not literally, maybe) over the "injustice" of it all and his detractors won't be able to help themselves but to rub it in saying "we told you so", which will only stoke the fires even more.

The psyop has worked flawlessly up to this point.

Trump lied. This is my shocked face.

Does anyone honestly think he didn't pork the whore, then pay her to keep her mouth shut? (after she finished of course)

Maybe it was a "Hump Sum"


Second line

And it being a lump sum or paid back in installments makes a difference how? Oh yeah it doesn't. Lying to the government on disclosures will get you under investigation regardless of whether you paid back the hush money all at once or a dozen different times.

Bottom line is, it is now disclosed, albeit too late and it is now drawing government attention as to why it wasn't disclosed before, when it should have been.

He (said) also the president was "fully aware" of his decision to reveal the fact that Trump had reimbursed Cohen in a previous Fox News appearance and "endorsed the strategy."

"We wouldn't do it without him," Giuliani said on "The Ingraham Angle." ''He's the client, after all, and has tremendous judgment about things like this. And I think it — that the OGE, the Office of Government Ethics, basically agreed with us that it had been fully disclosed."

"The fact is that the president disclosed everything that he could disclose. He can't disclose more than he knows. And we're very comfortable with it," he added.

US News

"This is a big deal and unprecedented. No president has been previously subject to any referral by (Office of Government Ethics) to DOJ as a result of having failed to report an item on their public financial disclosure report," said Virginia Canter, a former ethics official in the Clinton and Obama White Houses who is now with the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

How Trump dealt with the Daniels hush money in his disclosure has been closely watched, particularly after Giuliani gave interviews earlier this month saying the president had reimbursed Cohen in a series of payments after the campaign was over. Trump and Giuliani have clashed over what the president knew and when he knew it.

I doubt Lump Sum, or Strategy, or a million quotation marks or emoji are going to make this any better for DJT, but I can't blame you for trying, you're just doing your job.

Giuliani indicated in an interview earlier this month that Trump reimbursed Cohen in installments. The form Trump filed with the Office of Government Ethics last year, which was 98 pages long, contained no mention of the Daniels payment.

The agency's former director Walter Shaub has argued this week Trump must disclose whether he held debts exceeding $10,000 -- including his debt to Cohen for the hush money payment -- or risk breaking federal law.

CNN Politics

Just so you guys are aware - concealing hush money payments and lying to the government is a crime, whether they were a lump sum or in installments as the president's attorney declared.

a reply to: Kharron

Unless I’m missing something, it discloses Trump made an expense payment to his lawyer for between 100k and 250k. Where does it say specifically it was a 130k payment? Thanks in advance.

originally posted by: UnBreakable
a reply to: Kharron

Unless I’m missing something, it discloses Trump made an expense payment to his lawyer for between 100k and 250k. Where does it say specifically it was a 130k payment? Thanks in advance.

It's a year late and it references a payment made which was not disclosed when it was supposed to be, last year. The A.D. of OGE has determined that the payment was supposed to be declared last year and was omitted for whatever reason - he forwarded everything to the DoJ for an investigation.

Giuliani confirmed that the reimbursement/payment has been made (in installments) and is now claiming that everything was declared fair and square to the government and that the OGE confirms that. However, that is not accurate and the OGE only confirmed that the payment had been made and that it should have been disclosed last year when Cohen was paid. He declares it a liability that it wasn't listed.

I'm not a tax attorney so I don't know if listing the hush money reimbursement should have been itemized for each time he paid him, or if listing it in a category as they did is sufficient, but I'm guessing we'll hear more about this over time.

The story here was that DJT finally disclosed his payment made to Cohen last year, and the OGE found that improper and referred it to the DoJ.

a reply to: Kharron

Ok, thanks for the explaination.