Golf, sex and dollars, the scandal that puts Donald Trump on the bench

The case began with a July 2006 celebrity golf tournament in Nevada, where Donald Trump took an inglorious 62nd place. There he met porn actress Stormy Daniels.

In an idyllic landscape on the shores of Lake Tahoe, the 27-year-old actress, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, and the businessman known for his reality TV show, 60, have a fleeting relationship, according to her.

There was nothing to suggest that, once he became president, he would call her “horse face” and He would deny having had an intimate relationship with her.

The actress is no exception and gives him the nickname “little thing”, in reference to his virile member.

At the time, the real estate tycoon, who had just had a son with his wife Melania, cultivated a playboy image and let rumors circulate about the “hunting table” of his adventures, real or fantastic.

In the following months, Trump promised Daniels a role on his show “The Apprentice.” Contact between them stopped when the project fell through, according to the actress.

The context changed radically in 2011, when Trump, encouraged by favorable polls, considered running for the Republican nomination in the 2012 elections against then-president, Democrat Barack Obama.

The actress’s revelations

Aware of the interest aroused by his story and that, according to him, it would have come to light anyway with or without his consent, Daniels agreed to reveal it for $15,000 to In Touch magazine.

The newspaper even subjected her to a lie detector test to make her story credible, but the millionaire’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, threatened to sue her and she decided not to publish the interview.

According to the actress, a stranger approached her in a Las Vegas parking lot to intimidate her in the presence of her two-year-old daughter and order her to “forget about Trump.”

Trump ultimately did not enter the presidential race, but the issue resurfaced in 2016 when he won several Republican primaries and then the party’s nomination.

The media became interested in Stephanie Clifford’s story again. Cohen bought her silence again, as she had done before him with former Playboy magazine model Karen McDougal.

Trump, weakened by the release of an old audio recording in which he boasts of being able to “grab” women “by the pussy”, wants to avoid another scandal.

Silence payment

After the negotiation, the lawyer paid Daniels $130,000 out of pocket as part of a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) signed on October 28 under the aliases “Peggy Peterson” and “David Dennison”.

The matter could have ended there if the Wall Street Journal would not disclose the transaction in January 2018, less than a year after Trump took office as president.

Initially, Cohen covered for the president and claimed that he had never been refunded the money.

Within a few weeks, in March 2018, Daniels asked the courts to void the confidentiality agreement.

He made statements to the media and embarked on a strip club tour titled “Make America Horny Again”, inspired by the Trump movement slogan “Make America Great Again”.

In October she published her autobiography, in which she describes her night with Trump as “the least impressive” of her life and describes her sex unflatteringly.

Cohen, the target of numerous fraud investigations, agrees to cooperate with investigators and turns against his client.

In August 2018 acknowledges having made the payment “at the request” of Trump.

Meanwhile, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who joined the then-president’s legal team, freaked out when he admitted, live on Fox, that the Trump Organization had reimbursed Cohen.

The tycoon was thus forced to admit the payment but assured that he had not used “election campaign money”.

Neither the extramarital affair nor this payment pose a legal problem, but they do It is a crime to attempt to hide the refund from your lawyermaking Trump the first former US president to be criminally prosecuted.

Source: AFP