We’ve found the $130,000 that Donald Trump “reimbursed” to Michael Cohen
Last night Donald Trump’s “attorney” Rudy Giuliani went on the Sean Hannity show and acknowledged that Trump reimbursed Michael Cohen for the $130,000 that Cohen had paid to Stormy Daniels. Giuliani then provided some gibberish as to why this was supposedly legal. Experts have weighed in to the contrary, citing specific felonies which were committed. Giuliani did not answer the question of how Trump “reimbursed” Cohen. That’s okay, because we found it.
More to the point, attorney Susan Simpson found the money trail two months ago. In the week before Michael Cohen made the $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels, the Trump Campaign made a series of payments to the Trump Organization totaling $129,999.72. The numbers can be confirmed in the Trump campaign’s financial filings, which are publicly available on the FEC website. Unless you want to try to make the laugh-out-loud argument that Trump paid himself twenty eight cents short of $130,000 at the same time Michael Cohen was paying $130,000 to Stormy Daniels, this is how Trump moved the money around. Two things stand out here.
The first is that, while Michael Cohen formed his shell company to pay Stormy Daniels on October 17th of 2016, according to the Washington Post, he didn’t make the payment to her until ten days later on October 27th of 2016. The $129,999.72 in payments were made from the Trump campaign to the Trump Organization in between those two dates. This suggests Trump knew about the payment before Cohen made it, because he was already moving the money around before the payment went out to Daniels.
The second thing that stands out here is that after the Trump campaign paid the $129,999.72 to the Trump Organization, there’s no known record of the Trump Organization having passed the money along to Michael Cohen. Rudy Giuliani claims the reimbursement did happen, and perhaps he’s willing to provide records of this. We’re left to wonder if Donald Trump simply took the $130,000 from the campaign and then pocketed it instead of reimbursing Cohen.
