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Trump lawyer's payment to porn star raises new questions

The admission by President Donald Trump’s longtime personal lawyer that he sent $130,000 to a pornographic film actress, who once claimed to have had an affair with Trump, has raised potential legal questions ranging from breach of contract to ethics violations.

He insisted that the payment was legal. The Wall Street Journal first reported last month that Cohen had arranged the payment soon before the 2016 election, as Clifford was considering speaking publicly about the purported affair.

In a brief interview Wednesday, Cohen declined to answer questions about whether Trump had reimbursed him, whether the two men had made any arrangement at the time of the payment, or whether he had made any payments to other women or accusers of the president.

Charles Wolfram, an emeritus professor of legal ethics at Cornell University, said the situation raised a host of potential issues.

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“The thing seems so weird that it invites an inquiry into what you’re doing,” he said. “Lawyers don’t go around giving $130,000 to strangers, benefiting their clients, without billing their clients.”

Clifford believes that Cohen, in making his statement, breached a nondisclosure agreement she signed in connection with the payment, releasing her from the confidentiality commitment, according to Gina Rodriguez, her manager. Clifford, she said, is offering to sell her story to media outlets.

Cohen’s statement Tuesday acknowledging that he had sent the money to Clifford was linked to a deadline requiring him to respond to a complaint filed with the Federal Election Commission by Common Cause, a liberal-leaning watchdog group.

The group alleges that the payment amounted to an undisclosed, in-kind contribution to Trump’s presidential campaign that violated the individual contribution limit of $2,700.

Another set of potential issues raised by Cohen’s admission centers on legal ethics. As a New York lawyer, he is subject to rules of professional conduct in that state and could face disciplinary action — ranging from private admonishment to losing his license to practice law — if he violated them, although the still-uncertain details make it impossible to precisely identify which standards might apply.

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The New York Times

MAGGIE HABERMAN and CHARLIE SAVAGE © 2018 The New York Times

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