Donald Trump Played Central Role in Hush Payoffs to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal
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.
What Trump Did to Silence Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal
While President Trump publicly fought with women leading up the the 2016 election, in private he directed schemes to silence their stories of two alleged affairs. Here’s a timeline of Trump’s personal involvement.
Taken together, the accounts refute a two-year pattern of denials by Mr. Trump, his legal team and his advisersthat 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.
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.
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.”
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 punishment. His sentencing hearing is Dec. 12.
He told federal prosecutors he conferred with Mr. Trump in the weeks before the 2016 election about paying Stephanie Clifford, the former adult-film star known professionally as Stormy Daniels, to keep quiet about her allegations of a sexual encounter with Mr. Trump. He told them that Mr. Trump urged him to “get it done.”
Mr. Cohen has also described to prosecutors his discussions with Mr. Trump and a Trump Organization executive about how to pay Ms. Clifford without leaving the candidate’s fingerprints on the deal.
Mr. Trump’s involvement in the payments, by itself, wouldn’t mean he is guilty of federal crimes, according to Richard Hasen, a law professor at University of California, Irvine, who specializes in election law. A criminal conviction would require proof Mr. Trump willfully skirted legal prohibitions on contributions from companies or from individuals in excess of $2,700, he said.
When the Justice Department accused John Edwards, a former senator from North Carolina, of using illegal campaign contributions to conceal an affair during his 2008 presidential run, he argued the money was meant to hide his mistress from his wife, not to influence the election. A jury acquitted him of one charge and deadlocked on the rest.
Managing bad press
Mr. Trump was leading in most polls for the Republican presidential nomination in the summer of 2015 after announcing his candidacy for president. His past behavior with women—flings with models and divorces that played out in the New York tabloids—caused concern among his advisers.
Mr. Pecker could help manage bad press. The men’s relationship dated to the 1990s, when Mr. Pecker’s former employer, Hachette Filipacchi Magazines, put out “Trump Style,” a quarterly magazine for guests at Trump properties.
BRENDAN MCDERMID/REUTERS
Michael Cohen on whether he is loyal to Donald Trump
2017
’18
SEPTEMBER 2017
“I’m the guy who would take a bullet for the president.”
JULY 2018
“My wife, my daughter and my son have my first loyalty and always will.”
When Mr. Pecker took over as chief executive of American Media in the late 1990s, he imposed a moratorium on negative stories about Mr. Trump, who was known among Enquirer staff as an “F.O.P.,” or Friend of Pecker.
Mr. Pecker’s August 2015 Trump Tower meeting was arranged by Mr. Cohen. The media executive promised Mr. Trump he would flag to Mr. Cohen any negative stories about women that came to the Enquirer’s attention.
In May 2016, Ms. McDougal, the 1998 Playmate of the year, began to consider telling her story of a nearly yearlong affair with Mr. Trump. She believed the story would come out regardless, after another former Playboy model posted a tweet alluding to a relationship between the two.
Ms. McDougal retained Keith Davidson, a Los Angeles lawyer specializing in representing women who’d had affairs with celebrities. Mr. Davidson reached out to Dylan Howard, American Media’s New York-based chief content officer, to gauge the company’s interest in buying Ms. McDougal’s story.
Messrs. Pecker and Howard alerted Mr. Cohen, who in turn warned Mr. Trump, by then the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, who in turn phoned Mr. Pecker for help.
On June 20, 2016, Mr. Howard flew to Los Angeles to meet Ms. McDougal at her lawyer’s office.
Mr. Howard spent hours interviewing Ms. McDougal, pressing her for every detail of the alleged affair. Ms. McDougal seemed reluctant to go public with her story.
“I don’t want to be the next Monica Lewinsky,” Ms. McDougal said, referring to the young White House intern who was vilified after her affair with President Bill Clinton became public. Mr. Howard told her that without documents corroborating her story, it wouldn’t be worth more than $15,000.
When Mr. Howard finished interviewing Ms. McDougal that day, he and Mr. Pecker got on a three-way call with Mr. Cohen to discuss what she had said. They noted she had produced no proof of an affair with Mr. Trump.
MARK WILSON/GETTY IMAGES
Donald Trump on whether he knew about the payment to Stormy Daniels
2017
’18
APRIL 2018
Did you know about the $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels?
“No.”
Do you know where he got the money to make that payment?
“No, I don’t know.”
MAY 2018
“Mr. Cohen, an attorney, received a monthly retainer, not from the campaign and having nothing to do with the campaign, from which he entered into, through reimbursement, a private contract between two parties.”
Mr. Howard told Mr. Davidson that Ms. McDougal should get back in touch if she found any evidence of the alleged affair.
After the meeting, Messrs. Pecker and Howard learned Ms. McDougal had also been meeting with investigative reporters at ABC News about sharing her story in a televised interview.
Mr. Cohen updated Mr. Trump on developments throughout. The ABC talks prompted American Media to offer to buy Ms. McDougal’s story for $150,000 in early August.
The contract gave the publisher the exclusive rights to her story, and guaranteed Ms. McDougal and American Media two magazine covers on which she would appear as a model. As part of the deal, American Media had the option of publishing health and fitness columns under Ms. McDougal’s name.
In a Skype call, Mr. Howard told Ms. McDougal the covers and columns would help resuscitate her modeling career.
Mr. Pecker researched campaign-finance laws before entering into the McDougal deal. The question was: Would American Media’s payment amount to an illegal campaign contribution to Mr. Trump? Corporations are barred under federal law from giving directly to candidates, either in cash or in-kind contributions.
After speaking with an election-law specialist, Mr. Pecker concluded the company’s payment to Ms. McDougal wouldn’t violate the law, because the magazine covers and health columns gave him a business justification for the deal.
The contract had an effective date of Aug. 5, 2016. Ms. McDougal signed it the following day.
Mr. Cohen assured Mr. Pecker that Mr. Trump would reimburse the publisher, and they began to devise a repayment plan at the end of that month.
‘All the stuff’
Concerned Mr. Pecker might leave American Media, Mr. Cohen wanted to buy other materials the company had gathered on Mr. Trump over the years, including source files and tips. In a meeting at the Trump Organization offices in early September, Mr. Cohen told Mr. Trump of his plan.
Mr. Cohen, who complained to associates about Mr. Trump’s frugality, was also worried his boss would balk at reimbursing Mr. Pecker. He secretly recorded Mr. Trump discussing the deal.
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