Donald Trump’s attorney Joe Tacopina has been making the cable news rounds as the investigation into his client’s hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels heats up, claiming that Trump’s actions through the help of his then-lawyer Michael Cohen were “not a crime.” But an old clip of him saying exactly the opposite has resurfaced and is now making the rounds on social media.
During a 2018 appearance on CNN as Cohen was facing charges for arranging the $130,000 payment to keep Daniels quiet about an alleged sexual encounter she had with Trump ahead of the 2016 election, Tacopina said the payment was “illegal” and a possible “campaign finance issue” if true.
“For any prosecutor to say that doesn’t make sense, that a lawyer took out a home equity loan with his own money, paid somebody that he didn’t even know on behalf of a client who, by the way, had the wherewithal and the money to afford $130,000,” Tacopina said during a March 2018 appearance on CNN. “And, by the way, didn’t tell the client about the settlement agreement. It’s an illegal agreement. It’s a fraud, if that’s, in fact, the case.”
Tacopina added that Trump’s claims at the time that Cohen arranged for this payment on his own “doesn’t pass the straight-face test” and that it represented a “potential campaign finance issue.”
Watch the video below:
2018 pic.twitter.com/qdJJmRjJpU
— Acyn (@Acyn) March 21, 2023
