White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said Friday she had no knowledge of a $130,000 payment President Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, made to porn star Stormy Daniels when Conway ran Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign or while in the White House last year.
“I had never heard about that during the campaign,” she told reporters outside the White House. “I was the campaign manager. A lot crossed my desk and that was not among it.”
Cohen acknowledged he facilitated the payment to Daniels, which was made just before the 2016 election in exchange for her silence about an alleged sexual encounter with Trump in 2006.
The payment has faced heightened scrutiny this week after Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who recently joined Trump’s legal team, said the president reimbursed Cohen for the $130,000 through a series of installments last year.
Giuliani and Cohen all said Trump didn’t know what the payments were for.
The president addressed his repayment to Cohen in a series of tweets this week, saying the money was not related to the campaign.
Conway defended Trump on Friday after reporters questioned whether the president can be counted on to be honest due to the contradicting statements from Trump and Giuliani regarding the payment.
“The president is very honest,” she said. “He promised to cut taxes, and he did. He promised to get North Korea and South Korea to sit down and change the course of history, and they are. He’s got his delegation over in China working on more fair, more reciprocal trade deals.”
