In the latest episode of the long running dispute between Trump and former AV star Stormy Daniels, Trump’s “legal advisor” Giuliani has publicly contradicted what Trump previously said on the issue, and laid the groundwork for an investigation.

Trump has made clear that he was party to a non-disclosure agreement made between a former adult film star, Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, and his former personal attorney Michael Cohen. Daniels alleges that she had a consensual sexual relationship in 2007 while Trump was married, which Trump denies. Cohen arranged a payment of $130,000 USD, which came from his personal finances, and sources have claimed Cohen was later desperate to have Trump repay.

The question is whether the payment constituted a political contribution on the part of Cohen, who feared that the news leaking would harm Trump’s campaign and made the payment independently and for the purposes of aiding a political campaign. If this is the case, then Cohen would have violated campaign contribution statutes, and any cover-up or attempts to obfuscate this by Trump could be construed in a court as a conspiracy to abet or conceal a crime.

Last month, on Air Force One, a reporter directly asked Trump regarding the payment, saying, “did you know about the $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels?” Trump responded, unequivocally, “No.”

Yesterday, Giuliani went on Fox news and said the exact opposite.

When speaking to Sean Hannity, he said, “the president repaid it… [Trump] didn’t know about the specifics of it, as far as I know, but he did know the general arrangement, that Michael would take care of things like this, like I take care of things like this with my clients.”

The alternative, being pushed by Giuliani, is that there was a longstanding arrangement between Trump and his personal attorney Cohen in which he regularly doled out hundreds of thousands of dollars to any woman who came forward with any salacious claim about Trump. Trump tweeted this morning that Giuliani had a monthly retainer to make these types of payments.

This assertion seems not only excessive, it is unsubstantiated by the facts, the primary ones being that the payment was made exclusively through Cohen and not with Trump’s funds, the funds came from a personal credit line that Cohen had made on his very own home, and since Giuliani has asserted that while the payment was made to Daniels in October of 2016, Cohen wasn’t reimbursed for perhaps over a year, with a payment made at some indeterminate point between 2017 and 2018.

Trump, this morning, sent out a barrage of three consecutive tweets calling the original agreement entered into a case of extortion, and saying that this system of payment for personal claims against him were regularized. He then went on to directly contradict Giuliani’s claim about a later payment, saying that instead, the money was paid out of the “monthly retainer.”

If the latter was the case, and Trump was unaware, making the payment and non-disclosure agreement without Trump’s consent on the agreement, Cohen could have acted in violation of standard legal principles by acting on behalf of a client without their consent, and could potentially to be disbarred.

There are several open contradictions between the two in their public statements. Neither are averse to making demonstrably false public statements, and the suspicions by many that this is a poorly orchestrated cover-up are exacerbated the fact that Trump also misspelled a word in his short tweet, writing “roll,” instead of “role,” in a twitter record that will almost certainly be read of in court in any future proceedings on the matter.

Staff writer: Ari B