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    Saturday, May 11, 2024

    Report reveals Trump likely committed several crimes by paying off Stormy Daniels, ethics experts say

    In this file photo dated Wednesday, May 23, 2018, Stormy Daniels speaks during a ceremony for her receiving a City Proclamation and Key to the City in West Hollywood, Calif. USA. Daniels, the adult film actress and nemesis of U.S. President Donald Trump, has pulled out of a British reality-TV show at the last minute after a dispute with producers, according to information released Friday, Aug. 17, 2018. (AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu, FILE)

    President Donald Trump — already implicated in campaign finance violations over a hush payment issued to porn star Stormy Daniels — likely committed other crimes by failing to disclose that payoff in his sworn financial disclosure last year, a new report reveals, according to government ethics experts.

    A bombshell Wall Street Journal report published Friday corroborates in exhaustive detail Michael Cohen’s guilty plea from earlier this year, which implicated Trump in committing campaign finance crimes by authorizing Cohen to pay Daniels $130,000 shortly before the 2016 election in exchange for her silence about allegedly having sex with the president over a decade ago.

    However, the report also reveals previously unknown details about Trump’s involvement and awareness of a scheme his corporate lawyer Allen Weisselberg set up to reimburse Cohen for the hush payment — which ethics experts say prove the president broke false statement laws since he willfully omitted that debt in his 2017 financial disclosure form.

    “If we had as much evidence as we do now and Trump was the assistant secretary for some program at the Department of Commerce, he would be prosecuted and go to jail,” Walter Shaub, the government ethics czar under the Obama administration, told The New York Daily News. “At the very least he would be substantially fined, fired, lose his security clearance and never be allowed to work in public service again.”

    Shortly after Trump’s election, Cohen met with Weisselberg to discuss reimbursing Cohen for the payment he made to Daniels, according to the Journal.

    At Trump’s direction, Weisselberg then reportedly designed a reimbursement plan in which Cohen would be paid off in monthly installments of $35,000, which were docked in Trump’s financial records as legal fees.

    Trump’s financial disclosure form submitted under penalty of perjury in June 2017 did not list that hush payment debt to Cohen, which became a topic of great intrigue after the Daniels saga was reported in numerous media outlets.

    At the time, Shaub’s organization, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, filed a criminal complaint with the Justice Department alleging Trump had deliberately left out the Daniels payment from his disclosure filings — a crime that could result in upward of five years of imprisonment.

    However, CREW’s complaint lacked one crucial detail: evidence that Trump had willfully omitted the debt from the disclosure form.

    The Journal’s Friday report, which was based on three dozen interviews, corporate records, court papers and other documents, fills in that missing piece, according to Shaub.

    “The report shows Trump was deeply involved in the negotiations and plans for repayment and even took steps to conceal that the payment came from him,” Shaub said, referencing the entry in Trump’s bookkeeping that refers to Cohen’s reimbursement as legal fees. “That means the omission becomes a deliberate act and that’s a crime.”

    Despite the extensive sourcing, Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer in the Russia investigation, blasted the Journal’s report as “unsourced speculation” in a text message to the Daily News. He wouldn’t comment further.

    Shaub said he hopes the latest development prompts the Justice Department to launch an investigation based on his group’s initial complaint.

    “If they don’t, this is just another example of how this president is above the law,” Shaub said.

    A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment.

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