Press Asks 1st Stormy Daniels Question Since Scandal Broke

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Nearly six full weeks after the allegations first surfaced in a Wall Street Journal report, White House press corps reporters finally asked their first question about Donald Trump’s alleged extramarital affair with AVN Hall of Famer Stormy Daniels—and the $130,000 payment made to Daniels by Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen, a payment reportedly intended to keep Daniels quiet about her sexual encounters with Trump. Cohen last week admitted for the first time that the six-figure payout to Daniels was, in fact, made—and that he had used his own personal cash to “facilitate” the payment. But Cohen did not specify why he arranged for $130,000 to go to Daniels, or what he expected from her in return. On Thursday at the daily White House press briefing, at which Deputy Press Secretary Raj Shah presided in place of regular Trump spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders, ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl broke the month-and-a-half-old ice, breaching the topic of Daniels and Trump—only to meet an awkward and stonewalling response. “Last week the president’s personal lawyer acknowledged a $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels,” Karl said at the White House briefing.  “Is the president aware that his lawyer paid that kind of money to a porn star to buy her silence? Does he approve of that?” Shah responded only that the Daniels “matter has been asked and answered in the past.” But Karl would not settle for Shah’s initially evasive answer, following up the question by asking whether Shah would check with Trump himself, to find out if Trump gave the payment his thumbs-up. But Shah would not commit even to approach Trump with the query, telling Karl only, “I’ll get back to you.” Watch the full exchange over Stormy Daniels between Shah and Karl in the video viewable at this link. Karl said that he was asking the question now due to Cohen’s public acknowledgement of the payment actually being made, a step taken by the lawyer apparently due to multiple complaints filed with the Federal Election Commission charging that the payment violated campaign finance laws. Coming just one month prior to the 2016 vote, the payoff appeared designed to influence the outcome of the election—making it officially a campaign contribution which in addition to going unreported would have vastly exceeded the legal contribution limit of $2,700. In his admission, Cohen said that “neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with (Daniels), and neither reimbursed me for the payment, either directly or indirectly.” But according to legal analyst Jill Wine-Banks, in an interview with MSNBC, “Michael Cohen's money comes from the Trump Organization, so it's basically Trump money no matter what. And the admission that they're paying a porn star says something: Why would they pay her? It's because she could have possibly blackmailed the president."