DONALD Trump has defended the hush money payments made by his former lawyer to two women during his 2016 campaign as “a simple private transaction”.
He tweeted yesterday that, if there was wrongdoing, it was lawyer Michael Cohen’s “liability” and not his. US federal prosecutors said in a court filing on Friday that Cohen “acted with the intent to influence the 2016 presidential election” and at the direction of Trump when he brokered deals to stop women from going public about their alleged affairs with Trump.
Trump has argued the payments, which he first denied knowledge of, were not campaign contributions because his own money and not campaign funds were used for the payments. But US federal law requires disclosure of payments made “for the purposes of influencing” an election.
Meanwhile, Trump has been evaluating new candidates to serve as his next chief of staff after plans for an orderly succession for departing John Kelly fell through.
The new hire was to be key to a West Wing reshuffle to shift focus toward the 2020 re-election campaign and the challenge of governing with Democrats in control of the House.
But even senior White House officials were caught off guard on Sunday when Trump and Nick Ayers, whose hiring was believed to be a done deal, could not come to terms. No obvious successor was in sight and there was some fretting that Trump may not be able to fill the job by the time Kelly was set to leave at the end of the year.
A White House official said Trump and Ayers could not reach agreement on Ayers’ length of service and that he would instead assist the president from outside the administration.
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