Her signature is on a non-disclosure agreement (which Trump never signed, and which never became enforceable) that included the $130,000 payment. It was clear that the agreement was to accept the money for silence. It’s an exhibit to this lawsuit:
(Trump claims he had no involvement - Cohen did him a solid of his own accord. That’s why it’s important to have evidence from Cohen and/or Pecker that Trump knew about this plan).
How I see it:
Stormy went to National Enquirer to sell her story. NE, already having bought a previous Trump affair story, didn’t buy Stormys. NE sent her to Cohen.
Then, Stormy told Trump/Cohen if they didn’t pay, she’d go to the press (for free). Cohen decided to pay for her story and entered into a settlement agreement (not an NDA, although that would have been the appropriate document).
The Stormy blackmail aside, this is all on the up n up. It’s what happens next that gets criminal for Trump.
Election Related: Trump likely paid Stormy to keep her quiet due to the election. If so, he needs to properly disclose it. He didn’t. That’s a federal crime.
Business Related: Cohen paid Stormy. That’s fine. Trump Org paid Cohen back. That’s fine. Trump Org didn’t properly record the payback to Cohen. That’s falsifying business records - a NY misdemeanor crime. The improper recording was improper in several unique and different ways, so it’s several different charges. If done with intent to conceal another crime, this is a felony. This is the only crime Trump is charged with.
Tax Related: The payback to Cohen was not properly disclosed to the NY tax authorities. That’s a NY state crime.
All of these interplay to get 34 felony charges, but they don’t all hinge on each other. For example, The “Melania” defense (ie, paid Stormy so Melanie wouldn’t know, nothing to do with election) might knock out some of the business related charges that are tied to election crimes, but wouldn’t affect the (just) business or business tied to tax ones. Those standalone.
This is for clarity, and sacrifices some accuracy. But Hope this helps.
Is any of that, other than the NDA, true?
Tacopina was hired strictly as an attack dog, quite literally after Trump saw him on TV, which is the peak of Trump’s analytical capabilities. Todd Blanche was brought in as the actual legal brains of the outfit, supported in part by Susan Necheles.
This expresses my view exactly. As I said before, my hope is that serious criminal charges for election interference, mishandling of classified documents, and obstruction of justice come raining down on Trump like a ton of bricks, and this case becomes pretty much the final nail in the coffin.
Yes. As true as a few sentences can summarize.
Ignorance fought. I thought they were the same person, with Daniels = stage name, and McDougal = real name, but now I see they were separate people and separate incidents
My understanding is that the National Enquirer passed on Stormy’s story, not because they had a similar one, but because Pecker caught wind of it and let Cohen know about it.
I also don’t recall hearing anything about Stormy blackmailing Trump.
There’s actually another (uncorroborated, as far as I can tell) theory that the lawyer for Stormy (and McDougal), a man named Keith Davidson, was working with Cohen and intentionally brought his clients into his orbit to negotiate these agreements.
Basically, Davidson is a shady attorney who has made his living shaking down wealthy people to keep embarrassing stuff silent, and Cohen and him have been working together for more than a decade to reach such deals.
Both Stormy and McDougal later fired Davidson (although Stormy’s next lawyer, Michael Avenatti, was himself a crook who wanted to get into this extortion game), and McDougal has since successfully sued to unwind her own contract.
Lots of stories… not a lot of congruence…
See above re McDougal. That’s the other one I was referring too.
Blackmail is just threatening to make public embarrassing info about someone for money. That’s about what she did.
Moriarty - Re: shady attorney. Yea, he’s shady. When I say “Stormy” I’m including her attorney for clarity.
For the record, Stormy Daniels’ legal name is “Stephanie Cliffords”.
Early on, I thought the same thing.
I think it helps to start with the idea that Trump lives in a world where you can do whatever you want to people as long as you have somebody else come along and “take care” of them. Who knows how many non-disclosure/settlement agreements he’s reached over the years to avoid the embarrassment of being publicly outed for his conduct? (He’s certainly made mention of such contracts)
Once the election got into full gear, it became even more important for Trump to silence these stories. As somebody who had a track record of such things, he just had to ramp up the intensity of his usual cohort of “fixers”. I can imagine him yelling into the phone “find all of them! I don’t want anything getting out!”
So, his group of henchmen (who themselves likely only served their role because of how lucrative it was for them) began to gobble up whatever they could.
And since it was a group of people (some - like Pecker - in the media, and others - like Cohen - having law licenses) who had experience with this sordid stuff, they were easily able to work together to “catch and kill” the stories.
If one went to a lawyer, one of Trump’s “lawyers” would get wind of it and swoop in to “represent” them. And if one went to a media outlet, Trump’s “media” team would swoop in to provide them a “forum”.
At that point, it’s just a matter of paying money in exchange for complicity.
But, now you have a possible political scandal on your hands (in conventional times, can you imagine the fallout of a candidate having paid off a mistress?), so you have to be sure to obscure your actions.
However, to do that, you have to set up fake companies with fake invoices, since you can’t just withdraw hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash without being asked what it was for.
Thus, the effort to hide immoral behavior dovetails into criminal behavior. The lying is criminal, and the lying to influence the election (or, taking advantage of the lying by pretending it is real, and therefore a business write off) elevates the criminality to a felony.
And here we are.
That’s a good summary, but may I remind everyone that the actual court documents lay out the entire scheme succinctly, including Trump’s informal agreement for Pecker to act as “the eyes and ears” of the campaign and to alert Trump to damaging stories, also to run damaging stories about Trump’s opponents.
And I want to call attention to one detail, the reason AMI (American Media, the National Enquirer’s parent company) declined to pay for Woman 2’s (Stormy Daniels) story in the catch and kill scheme was that Trump was supposed to reimburse Pecker for the 150K they paid for McDougal’s story and he stiffed him. So Pecker declined to throw good money after bad and called in Cohen.
Pecker didn’t buy it because he was pissed that he hadn’t been reimbursed for the McDougal payment. According to Cohens testimony.
https://youtu.be/BKhtfu9i2J8?t=150
ETA Ninjad
In all fairness, you really got there first- you posted while I was editing to include that detail.
Maybe he figures a one-off does not constitute an affair.
@Ann_Hedonia
You did say it more eloquently.
She failed the probationary stage.
Without meaning to defend the Indefensible One, he would not be the first (ex-)President to split hairs about the wording of his relationship with some conveniently located woman.