By MikeMurphy
Editor
President Donald Trump’s personal attorney used a shell company and pseudonyms to pay for a former porn star’s silence over claims that she had a sexual encounter with Trump, according to a Wall Street Journal report Thursday. Citing corporate documents and confidential sources, the Journal reported Michael Cohen opened a private Delaware company in October 2016 and then used a bank account linked to the company to pay $130,000 to Stephanie Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels, in exchange for a nondisclosure agreement. Both parties used pseudonyms to mask the transaction, the Journal said. Cohen, however, used his own name as an “authorized person” for the company, the Journal reported, rather than hiring a lawyer for that task to hide his identity. Cohen told the Journal last week that Trump denies the claims. This week, the magazine In Touch Weekly ran a 2011 interview with Clifford in which she describes the 2006 sexual encounter with Trump, though she has since denied details of the affair.