From the moment we learned that Donald Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, helped arrange a $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about her yearlong affair with Trump, much of what we have officially been told by the Trump camp hasn’t passed the smell test.
For instance, no one seriously believes that Trump was entirely in the dark about this payment, and the accompanying non-disclosure agreement that Daniels is now seeking to have shredded. Under the rules of the New York state bar, Cohen was required to keep Trump informed about this matter.
Additionally, we now know that Cohen used his Trump Organization email to negotiate the payment a few days before the 2016 election–and did so in his capacity as Trump’s “special general counsel.” So at the very least, this situation is firmly in “what did Trump know, and when did he know it?” territory.
That question became even louder on Wednesday night, when CNN uncovered evidence that a second Trump Organization lawyer teamed up with Cohen in the effort to keep Daniels quiet. Anderson Cooper detonated this bombshell on Wednesday’s edition of “Anderson Cooper 360.” Watch here.
CNN got its hands on a “demand for arbitration” that ultimately resulted in a judge slapping a restraining order on Daniels last month. The demand was signed by Jill Martin, an attorney working on behalf of Essential Consultants, the dummy LLC Cohen set up to pay Daniels.
Now here’s where matters get interesting. According to her LinkedIn profile, Martin is an assistant general counsel at the Trump Organization. Additionally, the address Martin provided on the “demand for arbitration” is also the address of Trump National Golf Club, Los Angeles. That address is also listed on her file at the California State Bar. Avenatti subsequently confirmed the authenticity of that document to The Washington Post.
In a statement released via the Trump Organization, Martin claimed she was only working for Cohen’s lawyer, Lawrence Rosen, “in her individual capacity.” But even if you buy that line, Martin’s involvement amounts to poor judgment at best. She, Cohen, and the rest of the Trump Organization legal team had to have been aware about the concerns raised by watchdogs about potentially illegal intermingling between the Trump Organization and the Trump campaign. If Martin and Cohen expect us to believe that they weren’t at least thinking about the optics here, they, like their boss, are trying to play this nation for suckers.
Granted, it says a lot when the best-case scenario is that this was an egregious lapse in judgment. But consider that Cohen handled these negotiations using his official Trump Organization email, and was addressed in his capacity with the Trump Organization. And you also have to consider that Martin supposedly “lives” at one of Trump’s posh golf resorts. At this point, we at least have to wonder if this is more than just poor judgment.
Avenatti certainly thinks it’s a lot more than just poor judgment. He called Martin’s claim that she was merely working in an individual capacity “demonstrably false,” given that she was designated as a legal representative of Cohen’s dummy LLC and her full-time job with the Trump Organization. To his mind, “there can be no question” that the Trump Organization was representing Essential Consultants in an effort “to gag my client,” and it’s “a complete and utter fiction” to argue that the two aren’t related.
Cooper asked the obvious question–if Cohen was working in his individual capacity, why did he call on Martin’s services when he could have retained just about any lawyer in Southern California? In a colossal understatement, Avenatti thinks “it makes no sense” that Cohen turned to Martin if there was really no link between Essential Consultants and the Trump Organization. He believed that the American people “are crossing a Rubicon” where they are getting enough to see the truth for themselves.
This development came a little more than 24 hours after Cohen and the Trump camp more or less ignored a fairly reasonable offer from Avenatti–if Daniels paid back the money, the agreement would be voided, and Daniels would be free to tell all about her relationship with Trump without fear of reprisal. Frankly, this doesn’t look like a coincidence, especially given that Avenatti teased this development on Twitter.
Be sure to watch @AC360 tonight for new developments in the Clifford v. Trump matter. #factsarestubbornthings #basta
— Michael Avenatti (@MichaelAvenatti) March 14, 2018
“Clifford” is Stephanie Clifford, Daniels’ real name.
Almost as telling is something we haven’t seen. As I write this on Thursday night, we have yet to see any angry tweets from Trump. Normally, whenever CNN airs even mildly critical coverage of the Donald, he fires off a 280-character rant about “fake news @CNN,” or words to that effect. But so far, nothing. For that matter, we haven’t heard much of anything from Trump related to this affair.
Perhaps Trump knows Daniels has him busted. And that’s even before we know how much he knew about this latest soap opera and when he knew it.
(featured image courtesy ASACP RTA, available under a Creative Commons-BY license)
