Former President Donald Trump’s defense attorney repeatedly speculated as a legal pundit that Trump’s alleged affair with Stormy Daniels likely happened and that the $130,000 payment made to Daniels days before the 2016 election could be seen as an in-kind campaign contribution, contradicting his recent legal and public defense of Trump.
Joe Tacopina, a defense attorney representing Trump in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office investigation of Trump, made the comments in 2018 as a prominent legal commentator – years before he would ultimately represent the former president in the case that may indict Trump.
In multiple appearances on CNN in the spring of 2018, Tacopina speculated that Trump had an affair with Daniels after she detailed their encounter and because “to me, you know it means it’s true because he hasn’t threatened to sue” nor did he tweet about it. He also said that as a lawyer, he would have advised Trump to admit to the affair and move on.
“I mean, it’s remarkable when you talk about the president of the United States, but it, honestly, it’s not remarkable when you’re talking about Donald Trump, the president of the United States,” Tacopina said. “No one was here, is going, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe this!’ This is why I’ve been saying since day one if they had just said, ‘Yeah, OK.’ I mean, he survived much greater – I don’t even know if they’re called scandals – but episodes than this. This is from 2006. I mean, this is way before he was the president.”
“I’ve said all along, if he had just come out and said, ‘Yeah, I did. So what?’ And just chalk that up to another one of the things on his list of minor scandals, he gets through,” said Tacopina in another appearance on CNN in 2018.
“But she went into great detail about her one-night stand with him. What else can she say?…
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