just like every this decision was made by everybody was nervous about this from the beginning. i wasn t. i knew how much donald trump put into that campaign. i said $130,000? he can do a couple checks for $130,000. do you know the president didn t know about this? i believe that s what michael said. he didn t know about the specifics of it as far as i know but he knew about the general arrangements that michael would take care of things like this, like i take care of things like this for my clients. i don t burden them with every single thing that comes along. these are busy people. and the president has finished his thought now about his reimbursement to cohen. the president writes mr. cohen, an attorney, received a monthly retainer not from the campaign, having nothing 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 celebriti
of installments. does that help the president s case at all? that he didn t know at the time that it was a direct payment to stormy daniels? and he could just say, i was merely reimbursing for legal fees to the tune of well, $130,000 conveniently the price that was paid to stormy daniels? i think that it helps in the sense that if he had no specific knowledge. he may not be responsible for campaign finance violation that is intentional. but that s not the end of the question for a court. if he was aware that, and giuliani also said this, that there was a fluid relationship with michael cohen handling these types of problems. that doesn t necessarily take out what s called the senter element to the defense. i think what giuliani was trying to do was to say that cohen was never part of the campaign. he was the president s fixer.
would argue he should be subpoenaed before the grand jury. rick? senator, seeing that rudy giuliani s interview on sean hannity admitted there were structured payments from donald trump to michael cohen it reminds you of another case, dennis hastert, former speaker of the house, was convicted on structured payments to hide an underlying wrongdoing which was payments to one of his sexual victims which he couldn t which the statute of limitations had rung out so there was no underlying crime to convict there. but is there a comparison to these two cases? there is a comparison to the extent that there are records and probably highly incriminating records that are in the government s hands as a result of the april 9 raid on cohen s office and rudy giuliani s statements last night may well create a crime fraud exception, any climb of
the settlement payment which is a regular thing for lawyers to do. the only possible violation there would be was it a campaign finance violation, which usually would result in a fine not this big storm troopers coming in and breaking down his apartment and breaking into his office. that was money that was paid by his lawyer the way i would do out of his law firm funds or whatever funds, doesn t matter. the president reimbursed that over a period of several months. that was rudy giuliani last night on hannity. but here s what rudy said last month about the raid on michael cohen. this was before the former mayor joined the president s legal team. the washington post report reads in part former new york mayor rudy giuliani, a friend of trump, called the cohen raids a little heavy handed. is this surprise, yes, said giuliani, also a former u.s.
wow, okay. we wondered if the president of the united states would weigh in on giuliani s interview with sean hannity. he is beginning to now. the president writes mr. cohen, an attorney, received a monthly retainer not from the campaign and having nothing to do with the campaign from which he enter into through reimbursement a private contract between two parties known as a non-disclosure agreement, or nda. these agreements are and he s got an ellipsis, he ll finish that thought shortly. somebody grabbed the phone. kasie, can you decipher that tweet. this goes to i think what they thought they were doing last night which is they thought rudy giuliani was going to put to rest the idea that there was campaign finance violation in the payment to stormy daniels. they didn t do that but it seems the president thinks they did. and it still doesn t answer the question of this disparity between the president saying i didn t know about the payments to stormy daniels and rudy giulia