NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
On the case (DON EMMERT/AFP/Getty Images)
Rudy Giuliani has just exploded Donald Trump's flimsy lie about being unaware of an election-eve porn star payoff and possibly implicated the President in a violation of federal campaign finance law.
Giuliani did all this in his role as a member of Trump's legal defense team — just a day after revelations that the now-President dictated his own stellar bill of health during the campaign. When Trump still hasn't released his tax returns.
Now, in the umpteenth exposed coverup, Rudy wants us to believe cash to Stormy Daniels wasn't part of this pattern of pre-election coverups. He's got to be kidding.
For months now, the President's line on the $130,000 in hush money paid to Daniels days before the 2016 election — sealed in a non-disclosure agreement between Daniels, her attorney, Trump attorney Michael Cohen and Trump alias David Dennison, who never signed on the blank line — has been:
I knew nothing of any payment; the affair and all related claims are lies.
"There was no knowledge of any payments from the President and he's denied all of these allegations," said Sarah Sanders from the White House podium.
When the question — "Did you know about the $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels" — was put straight to Trump on April 6, he answered: "No," adding, "You'll have to ask Michael Cohen. Michael is my attorney."
Cohen had already said he paid the sum out of his own funds. "Neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Ms. Clifford, and neither reimbursed me for the payment, either directly or indirectly," he added.
Got that? The payment to silence a porn star claiming an affair with the then-Republican nominee had nothing to do with the presidential campaign, and in any event, Trump knew zip about it.
Then the feds raided Cohen's office, hotel room and home.
Then Giuliani came on board the legal team.
And admitted, last night, to Trump's knowledge of the payments: "He did know about the general arrangement" — and he reimbursed Cohen for all $130,000, through his personal account.
"Funneled it through a law firm, and then the President repaid it," Giuliani added, choosing a word usually reserved for financial activity known to be shady.
(Giuliani also, somewhat stunningly, said Trump fired Jim Comey "because Comey would not, among other things, say that he wasn't a target of the investigation." That further explodes the elaborate pretext Trump cooked up to look like he wasn't obstructing justice.)
But don't worry your pretty little head, says the former mayor, Trump hadn't been told and never asked what this specific huge payment was for. This was just part of a longstanding arrangement by which Cohen, on retainer, took care of these kinds of things for him.
It "had nothing to do with the campaign," the President or someone who happened to be controlling his Twitter feed reiterated Thursday morning, while admitting to the reimbursement.
But just minutes later on "Fox and Friends," Giuliani made clear the cash very much had something to do with the campaign: "Imagine if that came out on October 15, 2016, in the middle of the last debate with Hillary Clinton."
This is no mere matter of salacious interest to the likes of the National Enquirer, which would find a way not to care here anyway.
Federal law says "if any person, including a relative or friend of the candidate, gives or loans the candidate money 'for the purpose of influencing any election for federal office,' the funds are not considered personal funds of the candidate even if they are given to the candidate directly.
"Instead, the gift or loan is considered a contribution from the donor to the campaign, subject to the per-election limit and reportable by the campaign."
That's the law; no one is above it.
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