Stephanie Keith/Reuters
- Michael Cohen, a lawyer to President Donald Trump, allegedly organized a private, Delaware-based limited-liability company to transfer a $ 130,000 payment to an adult-film star who said she had a sexual encounter with Trump.
- The film star, known as “Stormy Daniels,” had reportedly talked to several news outlets about her story, which includes lurid details about the alleged 2006 affair with Trump.
- Cohen arranged the payment in October 2016, in exchange for her silence.
- The lawyer has strongly denied claims of an affair between Trump and Daniels, and rejected assertions that Trump paid her off.
Michael Cohen, one of President Donald Trump’s top lawyers reportedly organized a Delaware-based limited-liability company to transfer a $ 130,000 payment to the adult-film star “Stormy Daniels,” who claimed that she had a sexual encounter with Trump, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.
The payment was delivered in October 2016, just before Trump won the US election in a surprise victory over Hillary Clinton. The alleged encounter between Daniels and Trump happened at a July 2006 celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe, according to an earlier report from the Journal.
To get that payment to a lawyer representing the porn actor, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, Cohen created the company, Essential Consultants LLC, on October 17, 2016 and used a bank account attached to the company to transfer the money. Delaware is a favored venue for limited-liability company transactions because it does not require that people connected to the entities be publicly identified.
The Journal reported that Cohen also attached pseudonyms to Clifford in reference to the transaction. Cohen denies this, according to the newspaper.
Clifford has talked about her alleged encounter before, with In Touch Magazine and others. In Touch published its story in 2011, allegedly before a nondisclosure agreement between Clifford and Trump went into effect. She also talked to a Fox News reporter about her encounter with Trump. The network reportedly shelved the story before the 2016 election. Fox News denies that claim.
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