President Donald Trump's failure last year to disclose that he repaid his lawyer Michael Cohen for Cohen's pre-election payout to Stormy Daniels has been referred to the Department of Justice.

The Office of Government Ethics determined Wednesday that Cohen's payment to Daniels, which Trump repaid last year, constituted a loan that should have been reported on the president's June 2017 financial disclosure form. Trump did disclose the liability in a footnote to the form he filed Tuesday. The note claimed he did not have to make the disclosure, but was doing so anyway "in the interest of transparency."

In a letter to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, acting OGE Director David Apol wrote, "You may find the disclosure relevant to any inquiry you may be pursuing regarding the president's prior report that was signed on June 14, 2017."

Knowingly and willfully falsifying or omitting required information on the financial disclosure form can be prosecuted as a criminal offense, punishable by as long as a year in jail.

Trump and his White House staff had for months denied knowing anything about Cohen's $130,000 payment to Daniels to buy her silence about the affair the porn star said she had with Trump a decade earlier. Trump's newest outside lawyer Rudy Giuliani finally admitted that Trump had repaid Cohen in a Fox News interview earlier this month.

The White House did not respond to requests for comment.

In a Wednesday interview with HuffPost, Giuliani continued to insist that Cohen's payment to Daniels ? which he previously described as the settlement of a nuisance claim ? was fully aboveboard.