Michael Cohen reveal that not only was Trump himself more deeply involved in the “hush money” operation designed to silence Stormy Daniels than previously known, but Trump’s communications director Hope Hicks was also part of the scheme, according to an NBC News report on the unsealed documents.
Earlier revelations from the Cohen case showed that Trump was involved in the hush money deal “every step of the way,” as AVN.com reported, but the new documents appear to show that then-candidate Trump was even more closely involved than has been publicly known.
The Trump campaign’s attempts to stop Daniels from going public with her story of a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006 appears to have been sparked by the release on October 8, 2016, of the so-called “Access Hollywood tape,” according to a Politico report.
On that tape, which at the time was expected to devastate the Trump campaign, Trump is heard on a “hot mic,” making crude, sexual boasts about his attempts to have sex with married women—including an apparent admission of sexual assault, in his much-repeated claim that women would allow him to “grab ’em by the pussy,” without asking, simply because he is “a star.”
Trump, Cohen, and Hicks were all dialed in to a conference call on October 8, and after that call, Cohen called back and spoke to Hicks—to whom he had not spoken by phone in many months, according to the Politico report. In fact, prior to the flurry of activity following the Access Hollywood tape leak, Cohen spoke to Trump by phone only about once per month.
After speaking to Hicks privately, Cohen engaged in a rapid-fire series of calls that all linked to the hush money scheme, according to NBC News. He spoke to David Pecker, CEO of American Media Inc.—owners of the National Enquirer—then to another top AMI executive. Cohen then called Hicks yet again, took a second call from Pecker—and finally called Trump, speaking for about eight minutes.
The hush money scheme also involved a payoff to former Playboy centerfold model Karen McDougal, who unlike Daniels claimed to have had a lengthy affair with Trump, with multiple sexual encounters—all in the two years after Trump married his current wife, Melania Knauss Trump. Both Daniels and McDougal sued Trump to be released from the hush money deals. McDougal settled her case, as AVN.com reported. The Daniels lawsuit was thrown out by a federal court about a year after it was filed, when a judge ruled that the agreement was no longer relevant.
The payoff to McDougal was channeled through American Media Inc., owners of the National Enquirer. Both Daniels and McDougal were represented by attorney Keith Davidson at the time, with Davidson negotiating the deals.
“I have learned that in the days following the Access Hollywood video, Cohen exchanged a series of calls, text messages and emails with Keith Davidson, who was then (Daniels’s) attorney, David Pecker and Dylan Howard of American Media Inc. (“AMI”), the publisher of the National Enquirer, Trump, and Hope Hicks, who was then press secretary for Trump’s presidential campaign,” wrote an FBI investigator in the newly released documents.
“Based on the timing of these calls, and the content of the text messages and emails,” the FBI agent continued, “I believe that at least some of these communications concerned the need to prevent (Daniels) from going public, particularly in the wake of the Access Hollywood story.”
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