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President Donald Trump drew from a personal bank account after his election to cover “hush money” payments made on his behalf to two women with whom he allegedly had extramarital affairs, his former attorney Michael Cohen claimed in congressional testimony Wednesday.

In a 20-page written statement, Cohen told the House Committee on Oversight that Trump “directed” him to arrange those payments, which reportedly totaled $250,000, and gradually reimbursed him during his first year in office in 11 checks written to appear as a retainer for legal services, though no formal retainment agreement existed.

The now-disbarred attorney pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations in August after using a Delaware shell company days before the November 2016 election to funnel $130,000 to Stephanie Clifford, an adult film actress who works under the name of Stormy Daniels, to stay quiet about her alleged encounter with Trump.

Cohen, who also pleaded guilty to tax evasion and lying to Congress, reportedly made a similar hush-money payment to another alleged romantic partner of Trump. On Wednesday, he provided what he said was a copy of a $35,000 check signed by Trump on Aug. 1, 2017 to reimburse him.

“Other checks to reimburse me for the hush-money payments were signed by Donald Trump Jr. and Allen Weisselberg,” said Cohen, who also brought a copy of a second $35,000 check that included their signatures and appeared to draw from the president’s “revocable trust” account at Capital One on March 17, 2017. Weisselberg is the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer.

Lawmakers projected images of both checks on a screen as Cohen testified, including the Aug. 1, 2017 check allegedly signed by the president.

Cohen said that Trump assured him in a private meeting at the Oval Office weeks after his inauguration that the checks were on the way, but were caught up in “the White House system” after arriving from New York via Fedex.

The first reimbursement in the series, for $70,000, arrived “not long thereafter,” Cohen said Wednesday, adding that he originally made the payments with borrowed money.

Weisselberg made the decision to spread the payments over one year, even though Cohen said he would have preferred the repayment arrive “in one shot,” he testified.

“Mr. Trump directed me to use my own personal funds from a home-equity line of credit to avoid any money being traced back to him that could negatively impact his campaign,” said Cohen, who included a copy of the $130,000 wire transfer he made from First Republic Bank in New York to Clifford’s attorney, Keith Davidson.

Cohen claimed Wednesday that he used the home-equity line of credit rather than other funds he kept at First Republic to avoid having to explain the details of the payment to his wife, who has access to his accounts.

“Starting an LLC is not a sophisticated means,” Cohen said, referring to Essential Consultants LLC, the shell company he formed in Delaware in furtherance of the scheme. “You call up a company, you pay for it and they open it for you.”

The funds arrived at City National Bank in Los Angeles on Oct. 27, 2016, into an account controlled by Davidson’s law firm. First Republic Bank reported the transfer as suspicious to the Treasury Department, The Wall Street Journal reported in March 2018. City National Bank launched its own investigation in 2017.

Other financial institutions began pre-emptively gauging their exposure to Cohen by April 2018 following reports of an FBI raid on his office and apartment in New York, ACAMS moneylaundering.com reported that month.

Cohen outlined other misdeeds in his testimony Wednesday, including his submission of allegedly “inflated” financial statements to Deutsche Bank and other entities from 2011 to 2013 while Trump was trying to buy the Buffalo Bills football team. The former attorney said he also provided copies of those financial statements to Forbes magazine and other publications.

The president used his charity, the Trump Foundation, to buy a $60,000 portrait of himself through a straw bidder, the former attorney testified. Trump also arranged a $150,000 fee that a Ukrainian oligarch agreed to pay him for speaking at a conference to arrive as a donation to the charity rather than as a personal payment, Cohen said.

During Wednesday’s hearing, Cohen separately alleged that Republican operative Roger Stone told Trump in advance of Wikileaks’ pending release of emails belonging to his Democratic challenger, Hilary Clinton. The Republican candidate responded favorably, he said.

Cohen testified that Trump also knew in advance of the June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower between members of his campaign team, including his son, Donald Trump, Jr., and a group tied to Russian intelligence.

Trump did not directly order Cohen to lie to Congress about his business ties to Russia ahead of hearings in August and October 2017, but “in his way, he was telling me to lie,” the former attorney alleged.

Members of the House Committee on Oversight framed their questions to Cohen along partisan lines after his testimony, with Republicans targeting his credibility and accusing him of testifying out of self interest.

“You’re a pathological liar,” Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) told Cohen. “You didn’t do this to protect Donald Trump, you did it for you.”

Cohen’s three-year prison sentence begins March 6.

Contact Daniel Bethencourt at dbethencourt@acams.org