According to the Journal, Cohen agreed to pay Gauger $50,000 for these tasks, but after inviting him to Trump Tower and handing him “a Walmart bag containing between $12,000 and $13,000 in cash and, randomly, a boxing glove that Mr. Cohen said had been worn by a Brazilian mixed-martial-arts fighter,” Cohen apparently stiffed the guy on the balance. (In his only statement to the Journal on the matter, the porno-fixer disputed that he paid in cash. “All monies paid to Mr. Gauger were by check,” Cohen said.)

Luckily for Cohen, he was paid in full, asking for and receiving a $50,000 reimbursement from Trump, which was “paid largely out of Mr. Trump’s personal account,” and set up a nice system for Cohen’s future reimbursement for buying the silence of porn star Stormy Daniels out of his own pocket. (Prosecutors said in charging documents filed last August that Cohen described Gauger’s work as “tech services” on the handwritten note he submitted to the Trump Organization.)

The Trump Organization declined the Journal’s request for comment, while Trump’s five-star lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, seemingly only took issue with Cohen’s request to be reimbursed for more money than he paid RedFinch (“If one thing has been established, it’s that Michael Cohen is completely untrustworthy,” he said). Cohen himself copped to the scam on Thursday, blaming the whole thing on his old boss, though he did not say whether Trump agrees that he’s a pit bull sex symbol:

According to Gauger, he last spoke with Cohen in April 2018, after the feds raided his office, which Cohen reportedly believed “was not a big deal.”

If you would like to receive the Levin Report in your inbox daily, click here to subscribe.

Donald Trump scrounges up funds to keep some federal employees working

While hundreds of thousands of workers have either been furloughed or forced to work without pay during the shutdown, a small group of lawyers is still receiving paychecks for a highly specific assignment, per the Associated Press: