--- title: Sarah Huckabee Sanders Says Trump Did Not Lie About Payment description: White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said President Trump did not know he had reimbursed his attorney canonical: https://time.com/5264898/donald-trump-stormy-daniels-michael-cohen-rudy-giuliani-sarah-huckabee-sanders/ author: Alana Abramson article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2018-05-03T19:28:42.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-23T20:10:32.676Z article:section: Politics og:title: White House: Trump Reimbursed His Lawyer $130,000 Without Knowing It Was for Hush Money og:description: "This was information the president didn't know at the time." og:url: https://time.com/5264898/donald-trump-stormy-daniels-michael-cohen-rudy-giuliani-sarah-huckabee-sanders/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt148f2f69eb7479cf/69892e524ee262cecf31191e/gettyimages-9310611121.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 5760 og:image:height: 3240 og:image:alt: White House Press Secretary Delivers Daily Press Briefing og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: White House: Trump Reimbursed His Lawyer $130,000 Without Knowing It Was for Hush Money twitter:description: "This was information the president didn't know at the time." twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt148f2f69eb7479cf/69892e524ee262cecf31191e/gettyimages-9310611121.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # White House: Trump Reimbursed Michael Cohen $130,000 Without Knowing It Was for Stormy Daniels > Sponsored content. 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Brief is TIME's Washington newsletter, written by senior correspondent Philip Elliott. It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, three times a week. It reaches 85,000 subscribers with a 37.0% open rate as of August 2026. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters.  by [Alana Abramson](https://time.com/author/alana-abramson/)  ## Alana Abramson May 3, 2018 7:28 PM UTC  Sarah Huckabee Sanders, White House press secretary, speaks during a press conference at the White House briefing room in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Monday, March 12, 2018\. Sanders said that President Donald Trump plans to meet with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Washington on March 20\. Photographer: Joshua Roberts/Bloomberg via Getty Images Sarah Huckabee Sanders, White House press secretary, speaks during a press conference at the White House briefing room in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Monday, March 12, 2018\. Sanders said that President Donald Trump plans to meet with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Washington on March 20\. Photographer: Joshua Roberts/Bloomberg via Getty Images Bloomberg—Bloomberg via Getty Images  by [Alana Abramson](https://time.com/author/alana-abramson/)  ## Alana Abramson May 3, 2018 7:28 PM UTC A White House spokeswoman said that President Donald Trump did not know as recently as a month ago that he had reimbursed his personal attorney for spending $130,000 to keep a porn star quiet. Speaking at the daily press briefing Thursday, Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that Trump “eventually learned” that the money he reimbursed longtime lawyer Michael Cohen for included the payment to Stormy Daniels. But she said that he did not know about the reimbursement from his own pocketbook when he said on Air Force One on April 5 that he did not know anything about the Daniels hush money. When reporters explicitly asked Trump if he knew about the payment, he responded “no, no.” “This was information the president didn’t know at the time and eventually learned,” Sanders told reporters. **Read More:** [_A Short History of Trump’s Changing Story on the Stormy Daniels Payoff_](http://time.com/5264555/donald-trump-statements-stormy-daniels-payoff/) In [a number of interviews](http://time.com/5264311/rudy-giuliani-donald-trump-michael-cohen-stormy-daniels-payment/) over the last two days, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani has said that Trump [reimbursed Cohen](http://time.com/5263872/giuliani-trump-repaid-cohen-stormy-daniels-payment/) from his personal bank account as much as $470,000 for the Daniels payment and other “incidental expenses” from the campaign, breaking the payments up into monthly installments of $35,000. When pressed on whether that conflicts with Trump’s previous denials, Giuliani has also said that Trump did not know what the reimbursements were for at the time he spoke. “He didn’t know about the payment at the time that it happened,” he [told the _Wall Street Journal_](https://www.wsj.com/articles/giuliani-says-trump-repaid-cohen-for-stormy-daniels-payment-1525315656). “Which makes his statement literally true.” Sanders, who has also denied Trump knew anything about the payments, said she found out about the reimbursement by watching Giuliani’s interview on Fox News Thursday night. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5264898/donald-trump-stormy-daniels-michael-cohen-rudy-giuliani-sarah-huckabee-sanders/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5264898/donald-trump-stormy-daniels-michael-cohen-rudy-giuliani-sarah-huckabee-sanders/"},"headline":"White House: Trump Reimbursed Michael Cohen $130,000 Without Knowing It Was for Stormy Daniels","datePublished":"2018-05-03T19:28:42.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-23T20:10:32.676Z","description":"\"This was information the president didn't know at the time\"","url":"https://time.com/5264898/donald-trump-stormy-daniels-michael-cohen-rudy-giuliani-sarah-huckabee-sanders/","keywords":["White House","Donald Trump","rudy giuliani","onetime","michael cohen","stormy daniels"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt148f2f69eb7479cf/69892e524ee262cecf31191e/gettyimages-9310611121.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Alana Abramson","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/alana-abramson/"}],"articleSection":"Politics","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt148f2f69eb7479cf/69892e524ee262cecf31191e/gettyimages-9310611121.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"White House Press Secretary Delivers Daily Press Briefing","caption":"White House Press Secretary Delivers Daily Press Briefing","creditText":"Bloomberg—Bloomberg via Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/politics/","name":"Politics"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/white-house/","name":"White House"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/5264898/donald-trump-stormy-daniels-michael-cohen-rudy-giuliani-sarah-huckabee-sanders/","name":"White House: Trump Reimbursed Michael Cohen $130,000 Without Knowing It Was for Stormy Daniels"}}]}] ```