Donald Trump: Michael Cohen Payoffs to Women a ‘Private Transaction’ Not Campaign Contribution

Donald Trump, Michael Cohen, and Karen McDougal
JONATHAN NACKSTRAND/HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP/Getty Images/Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty

President Donald Trump defended hush money payments from private lawyer Michael Cohen to women on Monday, despite prosecutors claiming they were illegal campaign contributions.

“Now the Dems go to a simple private transaction, wrongly call it a campaign contribution which it was not,” he wrote.

Cohen pled guilty to arranging deals for Playboy model Karen McDougal and porn star Stormy Daniels to silence their claims that they had an affair with Trump before he was president. Cohen claimed that he did so at Trump’s direction.

Trump suggested Cohen was lying in order to get his prison sentence reduced, and that it was Cohen’s fault if there was a mistake.

“Lawyer’s liability if he made a mistake, not me,” Trump wrote. “Cohen just trying to get his sentence reduced. WITCH HUNT!”

Trump suggested that prosecutors were focusing on the payments because they found no evidence of collusion with Russia to win the presidential election.

“Democrats can’t find a Smocking Gun tying the Trump campaign to Russia after James Comey’s testimony.,” he wrote, quoting a commentator on Fox News, but misspelling the word “smoking” twice.

“No Smocking Gun…No Collusion,” he added.

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