Kellyanne Conway says Trump was not aware of Stormy Daniels payments when they occurred
Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway said Sunday that the president was not aware of exactly when payments were made to adult film star Stormy Daniels, despite his own attorney saying it was the president who made the payments. Rudy Giuliani, a member of the Trump legal team, told Fox News last week that it was the president who had repaid his personal attorney Michael Cohen for a $130,000 payment to Daniels as part of an agreement to keep an alleged affair quiet.
Giuliani's revelation differed from what Mr. Trump had previously told reporters aboard Air Force One, which was that he was not aware of the payment and that he didn't know where Cohen had gotten the money.
"The president told me just yesterday that when he said no on Air Force One last month he's talking about when the payment occurred, that he was not aware of the payment to Ms. Daniels when the payment occurred," Conway told CBS News' "Face the Nation" on Sunday. "And that is consistent with his tweets from a couple of days ago where in those three tweets the president had a lot to say about this matter."
When asked about Giuliani's statement that the payment to Daniels was a campaign expenditure, Conway said, "I don't know why anyone would say that. I would not characterize it the way - the president himself characterized it as not a campaign expenditure."
Asked if Cohen made other payments like the one he made to Daniels, Conway replied: "No, none that I would be aware of."
She said as campaign manager for the tail end of the race the issue of the payments "never crossed my desk."
"I was never made aware of this. I found this out many, many longtime afterwards long after I got into the White House," Conway said.
She pointed to the president's tweets as proof that the payment was not made with campaign dollars and was instead a means to "save the embarrassment for his family."
"These are private agreements. His personal attorney had discretion to do this, and that people who are wealthy and people who are famous do this routinely," Conway said.