Attorney Michael Cohen, who has for years served as a lawyer for President Donald Trump, was reportedly unhappy after Trump's election that he wasn't immediately reimbursed for paying off porn star Stormy Daniels.
In a new Wall Street Journal report about the Daniels payoff, sources tell the publication that "after Mr. Trump’s victory, Mr. Cohen complained to friends that he had yet to be reimbursed for the payment to [Daniels]."
According to the Wall Street Journal’s past reporting, longtime Trump attorney Cohen set up a separate LLC called Essential Consultants in October 2016 that he used as a vehicle to pay Daniels $130,000 in exchange for remaining silence about her past affair with the president, which occurred shortly after his wife Melania had given birth to their son, Barron Trump.
Earlier this year, government watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) flagged a Trump campaign reimbursement filing that sent $130,888.33 in campaign funds to a limited liability corporation called Trump Tower Commercial. The filing claims that the Trump campaign was reimbursing the LLC for “rent,” although it does not describe exactly what properties were rented out for campaign use.
However, if the Journal's reporting is accurate, the Trump campaign may never have reimbursed Cohen for this particular expense, thus making the post-election $131K reimbursement flagged by CREW a coincidence.