General Discussion

The President’s longtime former lawyer acknowledged a story by the Wall Street Journal on Thursday, that reported Cohen promised $50,000 to John Gauger, who runs the small tech company RedFinch and is the chief technology officer for Liberty University in Virginia. Gauger told the Journal that he had unsuccessfully tried to manipulate two online polls to benefit Trump.

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Gauger told the Journal that Cohen had handed over about $12,000 to $13,000 in cash and a boxing glove Cohen claimed had been worn by a Brazilian mixed martial arts fighter. Gauger said that he was never paid the rest of the money he was promised. However, court documents say that Cohen requested a separate $50,000 reimbursement for “tech services” at the same time he asked for a $130,000 payment for a hush payment to pornographic actress Stormy Daniels.

According to Gauger, Cohen asked him to write a computer script that would repeatedly vote for Trump in a CNBC online poll aiming to identify the U.S.’s top business leaders in January 2014. In February 2015, Cohen appealed to Gauger to rig a poll on influential right-wing news site Drudge Report.