"A $130,000 payment by President Donald Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen to the adult-film actress Stormy Daniels may have amounted to an illegal contribution to the Trump campaign, according to Trevor Potter, a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission.
Cohen has
acknowledged using his personal money to pay Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford. She has said the payment was designed to keep her from sharing details of an affair she says she had with Trump in 2006. Cohen has said he was not reimbursed for the payment, which was made 11 days before the 2016 US presidential election. He has also denied that Trump had an affair with Daniels.
But Potter, who was appointed to the FEC by President George H.W. Bush, told Anderson Cooper in a
"60 Minutes" interview that aired last month that Cohen's payment may have violated campaign-finance laws, which the special counsel Robert Mueller could use in his
mounting case against the president.
"The payment of the money just creates an enormous legal mess for, I think, Trump, for Cohen, and anyone else who was involved in this in the campaign," Potter said.
Potter said what he described as Cohen's "hush money" to Daniels could be considered an "in-kind contribution by Cohen to the Trump campaign, which is about $126,500 above what he's allowed to give."
On Monday, the FBI
raided Cohen's Manhattan office and seized documents connected to his payment to Clifford. The raid came after a referral from Mueller's office, according to Cohen's lawyer.
If Cohen is claiming to have made the transaction on behalf of his friend and longtime client Trump, the situation could be seen by Mueller and those investigating the Trump campaign as a "coordinated, illegal, in-kind contribution by Cohen for the purpose of influencing the election," Potter said, adding that it didn't matter whether Trump paid Cohen back at a later time.
"If he was then reimbursed by the president, that doesn't remove the fact that the initial payment violated Cohen's contribution limits," Potter said."
'60 Minutes' broke down how Mueller could use the Stormy Daniels 'hush money' payment into his investigation