Lawyer says he paid off woman who claimed affair with Trump

WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, told The New York Times on Tuesday that during the 2016 presidential campaign he paid $130,000 of his own money to a pornographic film actress who claimed to have had an affair with Trump in 2006. The Wall Street Journal first reported last month that Cohen paid Stephanie Clifford, also known as “Stormy Daniels,” in October 2016 to keep quiet about the affair. The organization Common Cause has complained to the Federal Election Commission that the payment constituted an unreported in-kind contribution to Trump’s campaign. “The payment to Ms. Clifford was lawful and was not a campaign contribution or a campaign expenditure by anyone,” Cohen told the Times. Cohen did not say whether Trump knew about the payment or what it was for. Clifford claimed in an interview from 2011 published last month that her affair with Trump occurred shortly after his third and current wife, Melania, gave birth to their son Barron. Clifford released a statement in January saying the affair never happened, but in subsequent interviews, she refused to directly answer questions about it.