May 2, 2018

Giuliani: Trump Paid Hush Money to Keep Stormy Daniels Quiet

giuliani

Siavosh Hosseini/NurPhoto via ZUMA

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WTF?

President Trump reimbursed Michael D. Cohen, his longtime personal lawyer, for the $130,000 payment that Mr. Cohen has said he made to keep a pornographic film actress from going public just before the 2016 election with her story about an affair with Mr. Trump, according to Rudolph W. Giuliani, one of the president’s lawyers.

Giuliani said this on the Hannity show. According to the Times, it “appears to contradict” what Trump has been saying for the past several months.

Well, no, it doesn’t “appear” to contradict. It just flat out contradicts what Trump has said. It also contradicts what Michael Cohen has said. So somebody is lying here, and there’s no good reason that Giuliani would suddenly volunteer to go on Hannity’s show to lie about this. In fact, he specifically said to Hannity, “I’m giving you a fact that you don’t know.” He’s working for Trump these days, and it’s obvious that Giuliani must have advised Trump that he needs to get out ahead of this. He must be afraid that Cohen has already ratted out Trump.

There was also this fascinating tidbit from Giuliani: “That was money that was paid by his lawyer, the president reimbursed that over the period of several months.” Why would Trump have to reimburse it over several months? Is he really that broke? Did he do it just to humiliate Cohen? Did he do it in $9,999 chunks so it didn’t have to get reported? What’s the deal here?

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

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