The Michael Cohen money trail just got so much uglier, and it leads right back to Donald Trump

| 10:43 pm EDT May 4, 2018
Dear Palmer Report readers, we all understand the difficult era we're heading into. Major media outlets are caving to Trump already. Even the internet itself and publishing platforms may be at risk. But Palmer Report is nonetheless going to lead the fight. We're funding our 2025 operating expenses now, so we can keep publishing no matter what happens. I'm asking you to contribute if you can, because the stakes are just so high. You can donate here.

After having consulted our Trump-to-English and Giuliani-to-English dictionaries, our best understanding of Donald Trump’s latest official position is that after Michael Cohen paid $130,000 to Stormy Daniels during the election, Trump reimbursed Cohen by paying him roughly $460,000 in monthly installments that may or may not have also been his regular retainer or salary. If you’re wondering why a cheapskate like Trump would repay Cohen more than triple the original amount, some new information places it all in an entirely different context.

Right around the time it was becoming clear that Donald Trump was going to win the Republican nomination for president, Michael Cohen went out and gained to access to a total of $774,000 in home equity loans, according to a new expose from the Wall Street Journal. We already knew that his $130,000 payoff to Stormy Daniels during the election was from a home equity line, but now we know that far more money was involved.

If Cohen took out a $774,000 loan and used $130,000 of it to pay off Daniels, it strongly suggests that he may have used the rest of the money to pay off other people who knew about Trump’s various dirty secrets. So now the search is on to figure out where all the rest of the money went. What stands out is that the payout to Daniels, which took place just days before the election, would likely have been the last of the bunch. Considering that Trump is now claiming he repaid around $460,000 to Cohen, it points to Cohen having paid out at least that much in coverup money. It gets worse.

Even as the WSJ is reporting that this whole thing was much bigger than $130,000, the New York Times is reporting that Donald Trump did in fact know about the whole thing a month ago when he initially told reporters he didn’t know anything about it. So not only does it appear that Cohen paid out somewhere between $460,000 and $774,000 to people who had dirt on Trump, it’s now confirmed that Trump knew about it and lied about it.