As the months and years of the Trump presidency drag on, the administration continues to languish under the weight of the scandal over the hush money that Trump lawyer Michael Cohen dished out to adult film star Stormy Daniels. That money was meant to cover an affair between Daniels — whose real name is Stephanie Clifford — and the president, and she has at this point long since sued to be freed from the accompanying nondisclosure agreement.
That’s hardly where the story ends, though. The public relations mess has turned into something much more pressing, with Cohen himself having been revealed to be the subject of a months long criminal investigation. That information came out after authorities raided Cohen’s office, home, and hotel room, looking for information covering an array of topics, including the Stormy Daniels hush money.
According to Michael Avenatti, who is working as an attorney for Daniels in her ongoing case against the Trump team, troubles for the president and his associates are still not finished compounding.
This Friday, he wrote on Twitter as follows:
‘Let this serve as formal notice – there is significantly more evidence and facts to come relating to Mr. Cohen’s dealings and Mr. Trump’s knowledge and involvement. You can come clean now or wait to be outed. Your choice. We have only just begun…’
Avenatti is in a good position to make such a pronouncement.
A central question of the ongoing legal struggle between his client and the president’s team has been what knowledge the president has had about Cohen’s dealings. At one point, the going line from the Trump team was that Cohen had undertaken paying off Daniels without the president having any knowledge of the goings-on whatsoever, with the add-on that it had stayed that way until the press reported on the hush money payment.
Recently, however, Rudy Giuliani — a recent addition to the president’s legal team — complicated matters for the nation’s chief executive when he let on during a Fox appearance that the president had, actually, reimbursed Cohen. It’s certainly difficult for the Trump team to maintain that the president didn’t know about the payment until the press did if he reimbursed Cohen.
Among the ramifications of the answer to the question of what the president knew and when he knew it is the legality of the payment. If the payment was truly in essence meant to prop up the Trump campaign and the president knew about this arrangement while not seeking to have it disclosed, the Trump team may have broken the law.
There are other possible implications of Avenatti’s Friday statement, too. He just recently revealed large payments to Cohen from companies including Columbus Nova, which has been described as connected to sanctioned Russian businessman Viktor Vekselberg. Those payments went to the same shell company used to dish out the hush money to Daniels and were made under the pretext of Cohen providing “insights” and access to the Trump administration.
If the president knew about those payments, then he could be in even bigger trouble than he’s already in because it would mean that he was in on a possible plan to sell access to his administration.
Check out Twitter’s response to Avenatti below.
Featured Image via Drew Angerer/Getty Images
