The truth is about to catch up to President Trump. He has Giuliani to thank for it.

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May 15 is the deadline for President Trump to file his financial disclosure form for 2017. 

That fact may seem trivially bureaucratic, but lurking at its core is a dilemma for President Trump that continues to metastasize into something ever more grotesque. The need to submit this form shows that in the Stormy Daniels matter, Trump has been boxed in by his lawyer (sic) Rudy Giuliani — and by his own tweets — with no good way out. He needs to decide whether to disclose the debt he incurred to his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, when Cohen paid $130,000 to Stormy Daniels just before the election, buying her silence about their alleged affair. President Trump did not disclose this debt in the financial disclosure form he filed one year ago — back when this payment, and Trump’s reimbursement of it, remained unknown. But thanks to Giuliani, we now know that President Trump did, in fact, incur this debt to Cohen. Thanks to Giuliani, Trump’s excuse for not disclosing this liability has now evaporated. To justify his failure to disclose it on his 2017 form — which detailed his finances for 2016 — President Trump could claim he didn’t know about Cohen’s payment or make any agreement to reimburse it. Whether that’s plausible or not, we can’t really disprove it. But now we know that President Trump did take on this debt in 2017, because Giuliani compelled him to admit it — by blurting out the truth.


The truth is about to catch up to President Trump. He has Giuliani to thank for it.