Even though the Stormy Daniels scandal has been the subject of unrelenting news coverage for the past few weeks, Trump has maintained an uncharacteristic silence on the issue – until now!
On Thursday, he broke his silence on the Stormy Daniels case. While traveling back to DC from West Virginia, Trump answered questions from reporters on Air Force One.
Pleading ignorance, Trump said he has no idea about the activities of his personal attorney, Michael Cohen – and an alleged payment of $130,000 to the porn star.
President Trump was further pressed about why his personal lawyer made the payment, to which he replied “you’ll have to ask Michael Cohen. Michael is my attorney. You’ll have to ask Michael.”
Trump further claimed that he had no idea whatsoever about where his attorney Cohen got the money from, for the payout to Stormy Daniels. “No, I don’t know,” Trump said.
In response to Trump’s statements to reporters, Daniels’ lawyer Michael Avenatti sent out a flurry of tweets, pledging to discover the truth of the matter.
“We very much look forward to testing the truthfulness of Mr. Trump’s feigned lack of knowledge concerning the $130k payment as stated on Air Force One. As history teaches us, it is one thing to deceive the press and quite another to do so under oath.”
Stormy Daniel’s attorney goaded Trump over Twitter, declaring, “The strength of our case just went up exponentially. You can’t have an agreement when one party claims to know nothing about it.“
Later that day, during ain interview with MSNBC, Avenatti gloated, “If the President didn’t know anything about the payment, then he obviously didn’t know anything about the agreement, in which case you can’t have an agreement. And then there is no such thing as an NDA.”
Avenatti’s argument about the non-disclosure agreement (NDA) being invalid if the President had no knowledge about it, does hold some merit and can be used by Daniels’ side.
Later on, in an interview with CNN, Michael Avenatti also stated that he will be refiling for a motion on Monday, to depose both Cohen and President Trump. Previously, Avenatti’s had filed the same motion, but it had been rejected, as the judge believed that this motion was still “premature.”
However, Avenatti believes that now there are chances that his motion might get accepted. “Now it’s not premature,” he said, since Trump’s legal team has already filed a motion for arbitration. “We will seek the deposition of Cohen and Trump.”