Donald Trump Played Central Role in Hush Payoffs to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
As a presidential candidate in August 2015, Donald Trump huddled with a longtime friend, media executive David Pecker, in his cluttered 26th floor Trump Tower office and made a request.
What can you do to help my campaign? he asked, according to people familiar with the meeting.
Mr. Pecker, chief executive of American Media Inc., offered to use his National Enquirer tabloid to buy the silence of women if they tried to publicize alleged sexual encounters with Mr. Trump.
Less than a year later, Mr. Trump asked Mr. Pecker to quash the story of a former Playboy model who said they’d had an affair. Mr. Pecker’s company soon paid $150,000 to the model, Karen McDougal , to keep her from speaking publicly about it. Mr. Trump later thanked Mr. Pecker for the assistance.
The Trump Tower meeting and its aftermath are among several previously unreported instances in which Mr. Trump intervened directly to suppress stories about his alleged sexual encounters with women , according to interviews with three dozen people who have direct knowledge of the events or who have been briefed on them, as well as court papers, corporate records and other documents.
Taken together, the accounts refute a two-year pattern of denials by Mr. Trump, his legal team and his advisers that he was involved in payoffs to Ms. McDougal and a former adult-film star. They also raise the possibility that the president of the United States violated federal campaign-finance laws.
The Wall Street Journal found that Mr. Trump was involved in or briefed on nearly every step of the agreements. He directed deals in phone calls and meetings with his self-described fixer, Michael Cohen, and others. The U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan has gathered evidence of Mr. Trump’s participation in the transactions.
When Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty that month to campaign-finance violations , prosecutors filed a 22-page charging document asserting that Mr. Cohen “coordinated with one or more members of the campaign, including through meetings and phone calls, about the fact, nature, and timing of the payments.”nature, and timing of the payments.”
The unnamed campaign member or members referred to Mr. Trump, according to people familiar with the document.
The revelations about Mr. Trump’s involvement in the hush-money deals come as Special Counsel Robert Mueller continues his probe into Russian electoral interference, and as a newly elected Democratic majority in the House of Representatives has signaled its intention to investigate the Trump administration when it takes power. Manhattan federal prosecutors who investigated Mr. Cohen are now examining business dealings by the Trump Organization.
Mr. Cohen, who implicated the president in his crimes when he pleaded guilty in August, has met with investigators for Mr. Mueller and with federal prosecutors in New York, seeking to provide information that could mitigate his sentence, which is scheduled for Dec. 12.
On Thursday, the White House referred questions about Mr. Trump’s involvement in the hush deals to the president’s outside counsel Jay Sekulow, who declined to comment.
In an Oct. 23 interview with the Journal, Mr. Trump declined to address whether he had ever discussed the payments with Mr. Cohen during the campaign.
“Nobody cares about that,” he said. He described Mr. Cohen as a “public-relations person” who “represented me on very small things.”
Mr. Cohen, who left the Trump Organization to serve as the president’s personal attorney in early 2017, and other aides denied Mr. Trump played any role in the two hush-money deals when they were first reported in the Journal .
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan came to believe otherwise. In August, they outlined Mr. Trump’s role—without specifically naming him—in a roughly 80-page draft federal indictment they had been preparing to file against Mr. Cohen.
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Right wingers don't care about the facts, they care about how they can try and spin them.
Presidential counsel Jay Suckaload has experience dealing with issues like this from his past work with the Heritage foundation. Those thumpers have a hard time keeping their pants on too. Old Pat Robertson even had to marry the first woman he knocked up.
I didn't know that.
No thumper would ever admit to it without being pressed. I'm sure his penis probably accidently fell into her after church one sunday. She couldn't get to heaven without surrendering to Jesus, and couldn't get to the wedding altar without surrendering to Pat. Baby steps, quite literally.
This is also news to me, but it appears to be true,
after a few oh god sessions between the sheets with Dede, the light bulb for the future went on for pants-off Pat
So she proposed marriage to him? I wonder how long it took her to regret that? And as a nursing student, you would think she would know how to prevent a pregnancy
It's only a guess but he might not have proposed and she wanted to get married before the pregnancy was obvious to others.
Why would someone want to date Pat Robertson?
That should be obvious, but maybe she preferred the rhythm method or the penny mothed.
If anyone gets stuck trying to read the lengthy and excellent article behind the pay wall this link has a good summary of the relevant details.
True. If trump were vetted HALF as much as Hillary was, he would be in prison by now.
And the "Courts" have ruled that good ol' "Stormy" is now on the hook for over 350 grand for Trumps legal fee's.
She had a GREAT Attorney representing her.
She won't have to pay 1 dime. Clinton was impeached by republicans for lying about getting a BJ while in office. What should happen to Trump for lying about the Stormy payoff while he was in office?
You sure ?
The same thing should happen.
“Nobody cares about that,”
One true statement by trump. His supporters don't care.
As Ed Morrisey says
”It’s all about consensual sex, after all, which Democrats assured us was a completely illegitimate issue for impeachment — even if a cover-up meant committing perjury, not just campaign finance rules”
Democrats seem angry trump, a former democrat, still plays by their rules.
He paid her off to influence the election. Nobody cares about the fucking sex. Tho it is pretty slimy to fuck somebody else when your wife is home nursing your baby
Right, and Clinton's perjury had no political implications and motivations. IF you believe that....
Just be honest. If Obama did the exact same thing, Democrats wouldn't care at all. It's all about getting Trump by any means necessary. No one believes Democrats have any principles about this. Trump plays by the Clinton handbook and it drives Democrats who embraced Clinton's lying nuts.
If Trump plays by the Clinton handbook, he should suffer the same fates. Impeachment and then investigation after investigation.
You wanna bet real money on that?
Bill Clinton disappointed the hell out of me when that all came out. I still think he's a slimy person but he was still a way better pres than what's currently smelling up the White House
Trump plays by the Clinton handbook, he should suffer the same fate
The Democrats control the House, they'd have to vote against impeachment, if they had principles.
That's hard to even type without laughing.
Was he running a campaign? No. He was a lame duck pres when it happened. Politcal implications? What part of your nether regions did you pull that from?
I guess it's too bad we'll never know because President Obama is a moral upstanding Christian husband and father unlike the vile adulterous wretch now occupying the oval office.
Bingo. I guess if we want to add trump to this list...
2 years in office. 109 criminal indictments. 32 convictions, (plead guilty). I am not sure about prison sentences...I know gates has done a month.