Rep. Charlie Dent (R-PA) said Thursday that it had always been obvious Trump lawyer Michael Cohen didn’t make an $130,000 hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016 “out of the goodness of his heart.”
Dent was responding to Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani’s claims in interviews Wednesday and Thursday that, contrary to Cohen and Trump’s previous claims, Cohen was reimbursed for the payment by Trump.
“I don’t think there was anybody on the planet who thought that Michael Cohen, out of the goodness of his heart, wrote a $130,000 check to Stormy Daniels without seeking any reimbursement,” Dent told CNN. “I mean, who would do that?”
“I mean, tell me a lawyer who would write a check out of his own pocket for his client without a reimbursement?” he continued. “I mean, come on, I mean, we’re not fools here.”
Giuliani, Dent said, “simply stated what we already expected was the case.”
CNN’s Poppy Harlow noted that Giuliani told the Washington Post that Trump’s reimbursement payments to Cohen were made in 2017. Did that call for oversight hearings? she asked.
“Sure,” Dent said, adding later: “If a Democratic president had done this, we’d be waving a bloody shirt right now.”
Earlier in the interview, seemingly in reference to White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ claims that Trump hadn’t known about the payments to Daniels, Dent asked: “How does Sarah Huckabee Sanders go to work everyday, if she was sent out there every day to mislead the American people?”
Watch below via CNN:
Republican Rep. Charlie Dent: “I don’t think there was anybody on the planet who thought that Michael Cohen, out of the goodness of his heart, wrote a $130,000 check to Stormy Daniels without seeking reimbursement” https://t.co/PJNcHkvRiX
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) May 3, 2018
