Trump is changing his tune on the Stormy Daniels case, and it's confusing the hell out of us in terms of what money came from where and for what and who and why-is-this-all-so-complicated.
What it means: Okay, so: if you've not been following the whole thing, Stormy Daniels says she and Trump slept together back in 2006, which Trump denies. She also says she was paid $130k to keep quiet about it, just before the election. Until now, Trump denied he knew anything about that too... until he suddenly remembered. Funny, that.
Trump's now openly said he paid his lawyer Cohen $130,000 as part of a monthly retainer to finance a 'non-disclosure agreement' with Daniels – in other words, hush money. It wasn't a 'reimbursement', nor was it 'campaign money', he says: it was just paying his lawyer to do his job.
The reason why this matters is because what 'type' of money it was is crucial to understanding whether anyone's broken the law. If the intention of the money was to make the campaign easier, it's campaign money, and violated campaign finance law. Also, if it was a reimbursement and not a payment, they probably didn't pay the right type of tax on it... another economics twist to the most reality show-esque politics story we've seen in a while.
