By Mary Papenfuss
“This is a very serious problem for Donald Trump,” says Stormy Daniels’ attorney.
Stormy Daniels’ attorney Michael Avenatti called for the indictment of Donald Trump after an article Friday said the president had played a key role in hush money payments during his campaign to keep women quiet about alleged affairs with him.
The Wall Street Journal reported Trump knew that National Enquirer executive David Pecker arranged for the tabloid to buy the rights to model Karen McDougal’s story of a 2006 affair with Trump — then never published it. Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen also paid actress Stormy Daniels $130,000 to effectively buy her silence as well during critical campaign months.
The newspaper said that the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan has evidence of Trump’s role in the hush money payments, which he has repeatedly denied knowing about.
Federal prosecutors have reportedly granted immunity to Pecker,
Avanetti, in an interview on CNN with Wolf Blitzer. called for the “immediate indictment” of Trump on “felony” campaign finance violations.
“You cannot square this report with the president’s repeated denials of having any knowledge of the payment” to Daniels, said Avenatti. “This is a very serious problem for Donald Trump. … He should be indicted. He should be indicted immediately.”
He added: “I don’t think we’ve heard the end of the details relating to this $130,000 conspiracy undertaken by Donald Trump and Michael Cohen. And my guess is that the government has audio recordings to support quite a lot of this.”
Check out the rest of the interview in the video above, and find out what surprised the attorney the most about the WSJ report.
