President Donald Trump has officially acknowledged that he reimbursed his attorney, Michael Cohen, for a payment the lawyer made on Trump’s behalf in 2017. The purpose of the payment is not named, but it was almost surely the one Cohen made to a porn actress with whom Trump allegedly had an affair. “In the interest of transparency,” reads a footnote in Trump’s newly filed 2017 financial disclosure form, “while not required to be disclosed as ‘reportable liabilities’ on Part 8, in 2016 expenses were incurred by one of Donald J. Trump’s attorneys, Michael Cohen. Mr. Cohen sought reimbursement of those expenses and Mr. Trump fully reimbursed Mr. Cohen in 2017. The category of value would be $100,001 - $250,000 and the interest rate would be zero.” That line almost certainly refers to the $130,000 payment that Cohen made to Stormy Daniels in October 2016 in exchange for her signing a non-disclosure agreement regarding her alleged tryst with Trump. One of Trump’s attorneys, Rudy Giuliani, publicly admitted this month that Trump reimbursed Cohen for the payment, but Trump’s financial disclosure form—which he signed and certified as accurate— adds an official imprimatur to the admission. Though Trump said that his disclosure of his reimbursement to Cohen was voluntary, government ethics officials said the reimbursement was required to be disclosed in the financial disclosure forms. —Lachlan Markay
