Trump and Hope Hicks spoke to Michael Cohen prior to Stormy Daniels hush money payments: Unsealed court records
President Donald Trump has continued to deny ever having an extramarital affair with adult firm star Stormy Daniels. But Trump’s former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, has maintained that not only did Trump have an affair with Daniels, he also directed him to pay her hush money in order to keep quiet. And new unsealed court documents from 2018, BuzzFeed News is reporting, show Trump and adviser Hope Hicks speaking to Cohen just before the attorney began negotiating hush money payments to Daniels.
According to a report by BuzzFeed journalists Anthony Cormier, Jason Leopold and Zoe Tillman, Trump had a conference call with Hicks and Cohen on October 8, 2016 — which was the day after the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape of Trump making sexist comments was made public. The FBI, BuzzFeed reports, also has a record of Cohen and Hicks speaking again later that night.
The unsealed court documents from 2018, according to BuzzFeed, also show other times when Cohen and Trump spoke while the attorney was in the process of negotiating a $130,000 hush money payment to Daniels.
When Cohen testified before Congress on February 27, Trump’s former personal attorney told lawmakers that he made hush money payments to Daniels on direct orders from Trump. Since then, Cohen has reported to federal prison — where he is serving a three-year sentence for charges ranging from campaign finance violations to bank and tax crimes.
This week, Cohen spoke to BuzzFeed from Otisville Federal Correctional Institution, stating, “I and members of the Trump Organization were directed by Mr. Trump to handle the Stormy Daniels matter, including making the hush money payment. The conclusion of the investigation exonerating the Trump Organization’s role should be of great concern to the American people and investigated by Congress and the Department of Justice.”
Hicks, BuzzFeed reports, has told the FBI that November 2016 was when she first heard about Daniels’ allegation of an affair with Trump — which is later than the October 8, 2016 conference call with Trump and Cohen mentioned in the unsealed documents.
According to BuzzFeed’s report, “the new documents reveal a granular tick-tock of Cohen’s negotiations, and how he came to establish an LLC to transfer $130,000 to Daniels and keep the affair from becoming public during the last days of the 2016 campaign.”
The documents were unsealed on orders this week from U.S. District Judge William Pauley III.
On Wednesday, Cohen’s attorney, Lanny Davis issued an official statement about the end of the Southern District of New York’s federal investigation of hush money payments to Daniels. Davis officially stated, “Case closed? Why is Michael Cohen — after all his voluntary cooperation and testimony that (former Special Counsel Robert) Mueller said was credible and went to ‘core issues’ and all the information and documents he voluntarily provided to prosecutors and to Congress — the only member of the Trump company to be prosecuted and imprisoned? Especially since prosecutors found that virtually all of Michael’s admitted crimes were done at the direction of and for the benefit of Donald Trump? Why?”
