New Delhi, Delhi, India
US President Donald Trump on Thursdays said that the hush money paid to two women who have also alleged an affair with him do not break election campaign rules media reports said.
In an interview with Fox and friends programme to be broadcast on Thursday, Trump defended his transaction to two women-- adult film actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen Mcdougal -- saying that the payment came from him personally and not from the campaign.
"They came from me," BBC quoted him as saying. "And I tweeted about it. But they did not come out of the campaign," He added.
The statement came days after his long associated former personal lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to eight federal crime of tax evasion, bank fraud and campaign finance violations.
He further added that he found out about the payments "later on", contradicting Cohen's statement under an oath that Trump had instructed him to make the payments.
Initially, Trump had denied knowing about one of the payments altogether.
Michael Cohen on Tuesday told a federal court in New York that Trump had directed him to arrange payments ahead of the 2016 presidential election to silence two women who said they had had affairs with Trump.
However, he didn't directly mention adult film star Stephnie Clifford popularly know as Stormy Daniels' name or any other woman, they are mentioned as "candidates".
The payments made to two women include Stormy Daniels who had accused Cohen of paying her $130,000 shortly before the November 2016 election to keep quiet about a 2006 sexual encounter with Trump. And the second is former Playboy model Karen McDougal who had received $150,000.
Within an hour of that development, Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort was found guilty of tax and bank fraud.
Meanwhile, he had also said that the US economy would collapse if he were impeached.
"I will tell you what, if I ever got impeached, I think the market would crash. I think everybody would be very poor, because, without this thinking, you would see -- you would see numbers that you wouldn't believe in reverse," Trump told the programme, Fox and Friends.