TIMOTHY L. O’BRIEN: Take a look inside Trump's often bizarre business empire
'Trump isn’t like most presidents. His financial disclosure – imperfect, subjective and stocked with a porn-star payment – is evidence of that'
Thanks to the Office of Government Ethics, a US federal agency created after the Watergate scandals to curb the kind of flagrant conflicts of interest that are hallmarks of the current White House, we just received our annual accounting of President Donald Trump’s personal finances. The big reveal in the document made public on Wednesday is that Trump belatedly disclosed a payment of between $100,001 and $250,000 to his personal lawyer and self-described “fixer,” Michael Cohen. The disclosure states that the president fully reimbursed Cohen in 2017, but doesn’t say for what exactly. It’s reasonable to assume, as everyone has already, that the funds covered Cohen for the $130,000 in hush money he paid Stormy Daniels, a porn star who claims she had a sexual encounter with the president. The president, Cohen and another gaffe-prone Trump adviser, Rudy Giuliani, have spent months tying themselves in knots with conflicting accounts about Trump’s involvement with Daniels. While disclosure...
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