Updated 12:05

US President Donald Trump has claimed that markets will "crash" if he is impeached over alleged wrongdoing in the 2016 election campaign.

In an interview with Fox & Friends if he thought he would be impeached, the president said: "I don't know how you can impeach somebody who has done a great job.

"I will tell you what, if I ever got impeached, I think the market would crash,” he said.

"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."

Hush money

In the same interview, President Trump admitted to paying hush money to two women during the 2016 Presidential election campaign.

He claimed he learned about the payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels and model Karen McDougal “later on” and insisted they were paid out of his personal finances rather than his campaign.

On Tuesday, his former lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to election finance charges over the payments.

Both women claim to have affairs with Mr Trump while he was married to his current wife Melania.

Mr Cohen said the payments were made "at the request of the candidate" to stop them sharing damaging information during the election campaign.

He said the payments were made for the “principal purpose of influencing the election."

Personal finances

President Trump said the payments “didn't come out of the campaign, they came from me."

"They weren't taken out of campaign finance, that's the big thing," he says. "My first question when I heard about it was did they come out of the campaign because that could be a little dicey."

The account contradicts Mr Cohen’s statement – who has revealed he paid off Ms Daniels and Ms McDougal at President Trump's instruction.

Mr Cohen gave the details while pleading guilty to a charge of making an excessive campaign contribution.

Cooperation

President Trump said it should be illegal for people facing prosecution to cooperate with authorities for a reduced sentence - which is what Cohen did to get a potential 80-year sentence reduced to a maximum of five.

The US President claimed people who cut deals with prosecutors "make up stories" and "just make up lies."

"It's called flipping and it almost ought to be illegal," he said. "It's not a fair thing."

Felony

Yesterday, Mr Cohen's lawyer Lanny Davis confirmed that the candidate his client was referring to was President Trump.

He said it was "absolutely clear that Donald Trump committed a felony" by ordering hush payments and that he had "lied about it."

In a news conference that followed Cohen's revelations on Tuesday, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders insisted that the president had done "nothing wrong."

"Just because Michael Cohen made a plea deal doesn't mean that that implicates the president on anything," she said.

"Enemy of the people"

President Trump was also asked if the press was the "enemy of the people."

"No, not at all,” he replied. “But the fake news is and the fake news is comprised of, it's a lot, it's a big chunk.

"Somebody said, what's the chunk? I said 80%."

Conflicting accounts

Before he was fired, Mr Cohen claimed he had paid the hush money out of his own pocket and was not reimbursed by the President.

In March, the White house claimed President Trump was not aware of the payment and had denied “all of these allegations.”

In April, President Trump said he did not know about the payment or where the money came from.

It was not until later that month that the US President admitted that he reimbursed Mr Cohen for the payments which formed part of a non-disclosure agreement.

With reporting from IRN ...