The president admitted that Cohen received a "monthly retainer," but said that it had "nothing to do with the campaign" in a series of tweets on Thursday. Trump has previously denied knowing anything about the payment.

President Donald Trump said that campaign money "played no roll [ sic ]" in monthly reimbursements to his former lawyer Michael Cohen, who paid $130,000 to porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016 to stay quiet about an alleged affair.

Mr. Cohen, an attorney, received a monthly retainer, not from the campaign and having nothing to do with the campaign, from which he entered into, through reimbursement, a private contract between two parties, known as a non-disclosure agreement, or NDA. These agreements are.....

...very common among celebrities and people of wealth. In this case it is in full force and effect and will be used in Arbitration for damages against Ms. Clifford (Daniels). The agreement was used to stop the false and extortionist accusations made by her about an affair,......

...despite already having signed a detailed letter admitting that there was no affair. Prior to its violation by Ms. Clifford and her attorney, this was a private agreement. Money from the campaign, or campaign contributions, played no roll in this transaction.

His comments come after his new lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, revealed on Wednesday that Trump agreed to pay Cohen $35,000 a month “out of his personal funds” over the course of a year-long period that began in the first few months of 2017.

“It clearly was a payment to reimburse expenses,” Giuliani told BuzzFeed News, after making the explosive announcement in an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News Wednesday night — adding the caveat, “I’m almost certain that there wasn’t an itemized bill.”

White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders refused to answer questions on Thursday morning about why she and the president had previously said they hadn't known about the payment to Daniels, according to CNN's Abby Phillip, instead saying she could not comment because of ongoing litigation.

Later, at Thursday's White House press briefing, Sanders said the "first awareness" she had about the $130,000 reimbursement was during Giuliani's interview on Fox News.

Back on March 7, in a White House press briefing, Huckabee Sanders was asked if the president knew about the payments organized by Cohen and she replied "not that I'm aware of."

When quizzed further by reporters, Huckabee Sanders added: "I’ve had conversations with the President about this. And, as I outlined earlier, that this case has already been won in arbitration and that there was no knowledge of any payments from the President, and he’s denied all of these allegations."

On Thursday morning, Giuliani was back on Fox News saying that Trump had no idea why he was paying Cohen so much money while he was actually paying it.



“He didn't know the details of this until we knew the details of it, which is a couple of weeks ago, maybe not even a couple of weeks, maybe 10 days ago,” Giuliani said.

The former New York City mayor went on to say that Cohen organized the payment to make sure the story didn't come out in final weeks of the presidential election.

"Imagine if that came out on Oct 10, 2016 in the middle of the last debate with Hillary Clinton," said Giuliani. "Cohen didn’t even ask. Cohen made it go away, he did his job."

The president also tweeted on Thursday that Cohen entered into a nondisclosure agreement with Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, which he said was “very common among celebrities and people of wealth.”



He said the agreement was used to stop Daniels from making “false and extortionist” claims about an alleged affair.

In 2016, Daniels signed a settlement agreement requiring her not to talk about the relationship. She has filed a lawsuit against Trump and Cohen in an effort to have it tossed out — in part because Trump did not sign it.



A federal judge put her case on hold last week for at least 90 days due to the ongoing criminal investigation into Cohen.



Trump said that Daniels had signed a “detailed letter admitting there was no affair.”

