Stormy Daniels has a "Monica Lewinsky" dress

[Howl]

I was pouring boiling water over tea leaves a few minutes ago and had this sudden inspiring thought.  Stormy is perfectly positioned to tell her story on film (Stormy makes a porno) starring herself as "PP" and an actor who looks like Trump (or just wears a bad Trump wig) as "DD".  Then she can portray EXACTLY what happened -- a screwumentary, as it were.  Using the aliases PP and DD as in the NDA is just sticking the knife in a little deeper. 

Surely this idea has or will occur to her or someone near her.  Really, it's the natural progression of things.  The idea makes me very happy.  Make America Adult Again, indeed. 

[JMarie]

She should give the money back.  First, it wasn't a whole lot, especially considering it was meant to keep her quiet about someone who could easily afford to pay much, much more in hush money.  Second, it would enable her to get a juicy book deal.  And third, she's already getting deals she wouldn't had she kept quiet.  It would be a win-win-win for her.

https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2018/03/10/trump-headlines-lead-to-surge-in-pornhub-popularity-for-stromy-daniels.html

Quote

Her fee for appearing at a Las Vegas strip club called Little Darlings in late January was unusually high, manager Ron Nady said. “She was the hottest thing on the planet,” he said. Also in late January, Daniels signed a new contract to direct adult films for Digital Playground.

“I have two choices,” Daniels told Rolling Stone of the Trump scandal. “Sit at home and feel sorry for myself, or make lemonade out of lemons.”

 

[AnywhereButHere]

Never mind lemonade - she's made a flipping, margarita fountain.

She found a brilliant way around a (seemingly poorly executed) NDA. She's spent her time in the media rather blatently "not" talking about what she can't talk about, letting the public do all the hypothesizing for her, "not" agreeing with said hypothesis with a wink and a smile, getting an attorney to combat the NDA adds fuel to the fire. She's raking it in in notoriety points and public opinion.

His end game confuses me. By constantly combatting her attorney and keeping the story in the news, he's just proving that there is a there there. And unless she has something particularly salacious waiting to be exposed, what could there be other than what we already know? He had an affair with a porn star. Sketchy, asshole behavior, but in the long run - whoop dee do. Cause we didn't know already he was a philandering jackhole?

Has she got something really crazy to reveal, or is he just bug fuck nuts. I know at least one of these is true...

 

[AmazonGrace]

Maybe she'd  confirm that he likes the pee pee stuff, or worse, tell the world he can't get it up?

[hoipolloi]

Corroboration from one of the four witnesses listed on the NDA:

Quote

 

Munyan also said Daniels had told him that she once spanked Trump at his request with a copy of Forbes magazine, an anecdote first reported by Mother Jones in January.

Although Munyan said he didn’t pry into the private details, he said it was clear that Trump and Daniels had a sexual relationship.  

“This was not a craft class,” he said. “This was definitely about sex.” 

 

 

[AmazonGrace]

6 hours ago, Howl said:

I was pouring boiling water over tea leaves a few minutes ago and had this sudden inspiring thought.  Stormy is perfectly positioned to tell her story on film (Stormy makes a porno) starring herself as "PP" and an actor who looks like Trump (or just wears a bad Trump wig) as "DD".  Then she can portray EXACTLY what happened -- a screwumentary, as it were.  Using the aliases PP and DD as in the NDA is just sticking the knife in a little deeper. 

Surely this idea has or will occur to her or someone near her.  Really, it's the natural progression of things.  The idea makes me very happy.  Make America Adult Again, indeed. 

Trumping All Night

Good Will Trumping

Art of the Squeal

Stormy Does West Wing 

Secret Services

The Deep State

All the President's Men

Beauty and the Pees

 

[JMarie]

9 minutes ago, AmazonGrace said:

Trumping All Night

Good Will Trumping

Art of the Squeal

Stormy Does West Wing 

Secret Services

The Deep State

All the President's Men

Beauty and the Pees

 

I kind of like Art of the Squeal.

[Destiny]

33 minutes ago, AmazonGrace said:

Trumping All Night

Good Will Trumping

Art of the Squeal

Stormy Does West Wing 

Secret Services

The Deep State

All the President's Men

Beauty and the Pees

 

I don’t know whether to laugh or vomit. Lol. 

[AmazonGrace]

Two things about this article:  https://edition.cnn.com/2018/03/13/politics/kfile-stormy-daniels-bubba-the-lovesponge/index.html?sr=twCNN031318kfile-stormy-daniels-bubba-the-lovesponge0443PMVODtop 

1. Stormy spoke about the affair on the radio in 2007.

2. There is a real person whose legal name is Bubba The Love Sponge Clem. 

 

 

[fraurosena]

Sweet Rufus! It's ludicrous how many deficiencies his NDA has.

Texas investigating notary over failure to sign Stormy Daniels nondisclosure agreement: report

Quote

Officials in Texas are investigating the nondisclosure agreement signed by adult-film actress Stormy Daniels after it was revealed that the notary did not sign or date the document, the Dallas Morning News reported Monday.

Texas notaries are required to sign and date agreements, as well as provide a certificate verifying those who sign documents.

However, notary Erica Jackson is now facing an investigation after she failed to do all three for the 2016 nondisclosure agreement regarding Daniels's alleged affair with President Trump. Jackson’s stamp is on the document.

“Attaching your seal to a document without a notarial certificate constitutes good cause for the secretary of state to take action against your notary commission," a Texas official said in a letter to Jackson, sent last week.

Jackson told the Morning News on Friday that she did not recall the specific agreement.

The Morning News also could not reach Daniels’s attorney for comment.

Reports surrounding the agreement and a $130,000 payment to Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, have dogged the White House for weeks. The payment, originally reported by The Wall Street Journal, came weeks before the 2016 election and after the release of the infamous "Access Hollywood" tape, in which Trump can be heard boasting of grabbing women by the genitalia.

Sam Taylor, a spokesman for the Texas secretary of state, said that the office was solely investigating “whether or not the individual complies with his or her duties as a notary public in the state of Texas.’’

It’s unclear if Jackson's missing signature or lack of certificate would impact the agreement.

Daniels filed a lawsuit against Trump last week, claiming that the nondisclosure agreement she signed to not discuss their alleged affair is void because Trump did not sign the document.

The New York Times also reported Monday that Daniels has offered to reimburse Trump the $130,000 she received from his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, in order for her to speak publicly about the alleged affair.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Uh-oh: "Trump company lawyer involved in effort to keep Stormy Daniels silent, document shows."

Spoiler

A top Trump Organization attorney filed a secret legal document to keep Stormy Daniels from talking about her alleged affair with President Donald Trump, deepening links between Trump’s company and the effort to silence the porn star.

The Trump Organization quickly distanced itself from the document, filed as part of confidential arbitration proceedings in Los Angeles on Feb. 22. The document was made public Wednesday evening by CNN and the Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post confirmed its authenticity with Michael Avenatti, a lawyer for Daniels.

In a statement, the Trump Organization emphasized that the company is not representing anyone in the Daniels dispute and “has no involvement in the matter.”

But the document suggests that that one of its attorneys was involved in the arbitration proceeding to prevent Daniels from revealing more details about her alleged affair with Trump, which she says began at a 2006 celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe. The White House has suggested that Trump prevailed in the recent arbitation ruling.

The document adds a new twist to the saga of Stormy Daniels, who claims she was secretly paid to keep quiet about her relationship with Trump just weeks before his November, 2016 election. Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, has said he paid $130,000 to Daniels out of his own pocket, dipping into a home equity line of credit. He has said there was no involvement by Trump’s company or Trump’s 2016 campaign.

The Trump company says Jill A. Martin, a lawyer with the Trump Orgnization, filed the document in her personal capacity while awaiting permission for another lawyer, not connected to the company, to practice in California. That lawyer, Larry Rosen, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday night.

Daniels has sued Trump in an effort to break free from a confidentiality agreement that prohibits her from speaking about her alleged affair with Trump. Her deal came two weeks before the election and imposed stiff monetary penalties for speaking about the relationship.

Trump’s lawyer Cohen, has acknowledged making that payment. He has insisted that he was not reimbursed for the payment by the Trump Organization or the Trump campaign.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders has rejected the notion that Trump approved the payment to Daniels, saying, “None of these allegations are true.”

But late last month, after the $130,000 payment became a focus of media scrutiny, Martin signed documents demanding that Daniels enter into private arbitration with Cohen.

Martin is based at the Trump National Golf Club in Los Angeles, according to California Bar records, and her LinkedIn profile says she serves as vice president and assistant general counsel for the Trump Organization.

While the documents do not show that the Trump Organization was involved in the initial payment to Daniels in 2016, they do show that a high ranking official at the company played a role in efforts to keep the porn star from telling her story now.

Five days after Martin’s filing, Cohen obtained a temporary restraining order from the arbitrator, preventing Daniels from speaking publicly about the alleged affair.

The notion that Cohen’s efforts to silence Daniels were walled off from Trump and the Trump Organization “is a complete and utter fiction,” Avenatti said Wednesday night on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360.

Cohen “expects the American people to believe that he spent all of this time and energy, hours upon hours, doing all of this work and the president never knew anything about it and no one in the Trump Organization ever knew anything about it.”

Avenatti has said that his goal is to “shed light” on Daniels’ side of the story. He has shown a willingness to surface secret documents, including the original hush agreement Daniels signed in 2016 and that Avenatti contends is invalid because it does not have Trump’s signature.

Under that hush agreement, disputes must be settled by private arbitration, in which filings are not entered into the public record. And the penalty for breaking the agreement at $1 million per violation.

Cohen has previously said that Avenatti was exposing Daniels to financial risk and that he intends to pursue damages.

Martin, the Trump Organization lawyer who signed the arbitration documents, is a Trump loyalist who was a vocal supporter of Trump’s following revelations that he had once bragged about grabbing women. She could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

“None of us would ever imagine he would do something like this,” Martin said on CNN in October 2016. “It’s just completely inconsistent with his character and our own personal experiences, so because of that I believe him when he says he didn’t do anything inappropriate with women.”

Also during the presidential campaign, Martin told talk show host Larry King that Trump “does promote women more than I’ve seen in other big companies,” describing him as “a champion of women succeeding in business.”

Contacted in 2015 for an article about women who had worked closely with Trump, Michael Cohen put forward Jill Martin, who was 35 at the time. Martin, who said she had joined the Trump Organization five years earlier, described Trump as helping to advance her career. When a case went before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, Martin said she expected Trump would ask a more experienced male lawyer to argue the case. Instead, “He said, ‘Jill, you’ll do great,’ ” she recalled. “He pushed me when I needed it.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"BuzzFeed maneuver could free Stormy Daniels to speak on Trump"

Spoiler

BuzzFeed may have found a legal opening to allow the porn actress Stormy Daniels to discuss her alleged relationship with President Donald Trump and a $130,000 payment she received just before the 2016 election as part of a nondisclosure agreement she is now trying to void.

The same Trump attorney who brokered the deal with Daniels, Michael Cohen, filed a libel suit in January against BuzzFeed and four of its staffers over publication of the so-called dossier compiling accurate, inaccurate and unproven allegations about Trump’s relationship with Russia.

Now, BuzzFeed is using Cohen’s libel suit as a vehicle to demand that Daniels preserve all records relating to her relationship with Trump, as well as her dealings with Cohen and the payment he has acknowledged arranging in 2016.

On Tuesday, BuzzFeed’s lawyer wrote to Daniels’ attorney asking that the adult film actress, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, preserve various categories of documents. Such preservation letters are often a prelude to a subpoena. If Daniels’ testimony is formally demanded in a deposition, the nondisclosure agreement would likely be no obstacle, legal experts said.

The letter from BuzzFeed’s attorney, obtained by POLITICO, argues that Cohen’s role in paying Daniels is similar to allegations in the dossier about Cohen. The dossier alleges that Cohen met Russian legal officials and legislators in Prague in August 2016 in a bid to “sweep … under the carpet” details of the relationship between Russia and Trump campaign officials like Paul Manafort and Rick Gates. Cohen has flatly denied the claim.

“Mr. Cohen’s role in President Trump’s 2016 campaign, including but not limited to any payments he made or facilitated to third parties during or in connection with the campaign, is therefore directly relevant to” Cohen’s suit, BuzzFeed lawyer Katherine Bolger wrote.

Bolger asked Daniels to preserve all records of negotiations, agreements and payments involving Cohen, but also for more direct proof of Daniels’ alleged connection with Trump, including “any and all documents or communications about any relationship and/or sexual encounter(s) Ms. Clifford had and/or was alleged to have had, with President Trump.”

Daniels’ lawyer, Michael Avenatti, confirmed on Wednesday that he’d received the letter from BuzzFeed. Asked how Daniels would respond, he said, “We don’t have a position as of yet.” He declined further comment.

Last week, Daniels filed suit in state court in Los Angeles, seeking to have the nondisclosure agreement tossed out because Trump never signed it.

The preservation notice sent to Daniels’ attorney was one of more than a dozen such letters BuzzFeed’s legal team sent this week to a number of high-profile players in the Trump orbit, including former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, Manafort’s former deputy Rick Gates, former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, former White House adviser Steve Bannon, current White House adviser Kellyanne Conway and former Trump bodyguard Keith Schiller, as well as Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr.

A deposition by Daniels is probably some months away. It would not typically take place in public, but lawyers for either side would be free to release it or related documents unless a judge forbade it.

Cohen’s attorney in the libel suit against BuzzFeed, David Schwartz, said on Wednesday he was aware of the preservation letters and would probably object to any attempt by the news outlet to dig into the Daniels episode or other matters not referred to directly in the dossier.

“Certainly at the appropriate time there’ll be a fight in court as to limitations in discovery in this case,” Schwartz told POLITICO. “We want a very narrow view of discovery for many different reasons. … I think those recipients [of the letters] are going to be irrelevant to the case at hand.”

Schwartz said he expected to be buried in paperwork from the law firms representing BuzzFeed and Fusion GPS, the private investigation firm that commissioned the dossier. Cohen sued Fusion in a separate, parallel libel case in January.

“They’re going to try to wipe us out with demands on every unrelated issue under the sun,” the attorney for Cohen said. “I believe when you know something is fake and you still post it as if it were real, where no other news organization would do such a thing, I think you’re committing an intentional act and they’re going to be liable for defamation.”

A spokesman for BuzzFeed suggested that since the libel suit seeks compensation for damage to Cohen’s reputation, episodes affecting his public standing are fair game for discovery.

“Mr. Cohen’s personal reputation, and his actions on Donald Trump’s behalf, are directly relevant to this case,” spokesman Matt Mittenthal said. “We look forward to defending our First Amendment rights in court.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"CBS tentatively sets March 25 for airing ‘60 Minutes’ interview with Stormy Daniels"

Spoiler

For a week, the world has waited: When would “60 Minutes” air its interview with porn star Stormy Daniels alleging an affair with President Trump? CBS has been silent. Now there is a planned date, March 25, according to two people familiar with the timing.

Daniels’s attorney, Michael Avenatti, heightened the suspense. After Daniels sat for an interview with news anchor Anderson Cooper, the lawyer tweeted a photo of the three of them, along with the Twitter handle @60Minutes — teasing a tell-all from the woman who has been silenced for more than a year by Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen.

But the airing date remained vague, leading to speculation that CBS was embroiled in a legal battle before it could move forward with the salacious segment, expected to reveal details of the alleged affair that Daniels says began at a celebrity golf tournament in 2006.

Interviews such as this — promising insights into an alleged affair between a president and a porn star, set against the roiling #MeToo movement — are ratings gold. Networks go to great lengths to secure them and promote them heavily. Today, though, armed with social media, Avenatti has been driving the media narrative. Since filing suit on Daniels’s behalf, seeking to release her from her confidentiality agreement, he has become a regular presence on-air, using Twitter to promote nuggets of information he releases incrementally — a step ahead of his chosen news outlets.

Over the weekend, Avenatti added to speculation that Trump’s lawyers might be delaying the interview by tweeting a BuzzFeed report quoting an anonymous source saying they “are preparing to file for a legal injunction to prevent it from airing.”

And on Wednesday, hours before he appeared with Cooper on CNN to reveal a document showing that a Trump Organization attorney played a recent role in securing Daniels’s ongoing silence, Avenatti teased the revelation on Twitter.

“Be sure to watch @AC360 tonight for new developments in the Clifford v. Trump matter. #factsarestubbornthings #basta,” he wrote.

Avenatti did not respond to a question about the interview’s timing.

CBS News officially offered little information. Network president David Rhodes has made no official statement. CBS declined to comment on whether it made any legal arrangement with Daniels. It also declined to say whether it has received any legal threats from Trump or his attorneys, leaving open the possibility that there is behind-the-scenes maneuvering.

On Tuesday, Rhodes seemed to quell such speculation when he told a gathering at the Innovative TV conference in Jerusalem that the interview has not yet run because of routine editorial procedures. The entertainment magazine Variety covered that event and posted an online report. CBS confirmed the accuracy of Rhodes’s remarks and subsequently posted its own story, crediting Variety.

“The only reason it hasn’t run is that there’s still a lot of journalistic work to do,” Rhodes said, according to Variety. “The encounter between Anderson Cooper and Stormy Daniels was accompanied also by conversations with attorneys, documents were provided, and so we have to run all that down before it runs.”

Rhodes also brushed aside concerns about a legal challenge.

“60 Minutes” has particular reason not to be stopped by legal threats. More than 20 years ago, the show interviewed Jeffrey Wigand, former research director for one of the country’s largest tobacco companies, and faced the potential for expensive litigation stemming from Wigand’s confidentiality agreement with his former employer.

“It was just mishandled,” Jeff Fager, then executive producer of CBS Evening News, recalled in a CBS report.

Fager, now executive producer of “60 Minutes,” did not respond to an interview request.

When ABC’s “20/20” secured its exclusive interview for Barbara Walters with Monica Lewinksy, the network — whose guidelines forbid paying for interviews — allowed Lewinsky to resell international broadcast rights of the interview, which garnered $1 million, according to a Jane Mayer piece in the New Yorker in 2000. As part of her immunity deal, Lewinsky had agreed to give no interviews about her experience. ABC considered suing then-independent counsel Ken Starr for violating Lewinsky’s First Amendment rights, according to the Mayer piece, the contents of which The Washington Post confirmed with a person with direct knowledge of the arrangement. Instead, the network paid $25,000 to Theodore Olson of Gibson Dunn, who was a close friend of Starr’s. The payment allowed Olson to negotiate a private deal with Starr, who permitted the interview. Olson declined to comment, as did a representative for ABC.

Networks battle to secure the booking, tape the subject as soon as possible and then are left afterward sorting through the material that’s been gathered.

Ted Boutrous, a First Amendment attorney at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, who frequently represents media organizations and briefly represented former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who allegedly had an affair with Trump before he took office, said that in such cases, networks would check and verify the authenticity of any audio or video recordings they have obtained. For CBS, this would be of particular concern given its Dan Rather report critical of then-candidate George W. Bush’s service in the Air National Guard. Documents used in that report were later found to be not authentic, and CBS retracted it.

When NBC aired an hour-long “Dateline” interview with Juanita Broaddrick, who accused Bill Clinton of raping her when he was a candidate for governor of Arkansas, producers of the show went to all the hotels in Arkansas to attempt to verify a specific encounter she had discussed during the interview, according to a former “Nightline” producer. Preparing that interview to air took months, the producer said.

The news cycle has sped up since then, something evidently not lost on Avenatti, who appears ready to move faster than the media outlets angling for the next step in his client’s story.

This story involves publishing information about private intimate sexual activities, an area that got a lot of attention around the Peter Thiel-backed Hulk Hogan case against Gawker Media, which was eventually driven into bankruptcy as a result of the suit. Hogan prevailed in arguing that Gawker had violated his privacy. “There is a privacy element, but in this circumstance that is out the window,” Boutrous says.

The payments made to Daniels occurred after Trump was a candidate and had threatened litigation against women alleging that he had engaged in sexual improprieties.

The potential for stopping the “60 Minutes” report is unlikely to be in the form of a court injunction — which is seldom permitted under First Amendment doctrine, legal experts say. But powerful figures can slow publication of damaging material simply by threatening legal action.

George Freeman, the New York Times’s First Amendment lawyer for 30 years who now serves as executive director of the Media Law Resource Center, said CBS’s scheduling decision might reflect other priorities. “I don’t see a legal reason why they wouldn’t air it,” he said.

Some legal experts see potential peril for Daniels if the “60 Minutes” interview goes ahead, and Cohen has vowed to follow up.

“I believe Mr. Avenatti’s actions and behavior has been both reckless and imprudent as it opens Ms. Clifford to substantial monetary liability, which I intend to pursue,” Cohen told The Post.

The penalties are draconian — $1 million each time Daniels defies the confidentiality agreement’s constraints. Last week she launched an online fundraising campaign to cover her legal costs.

“I can’t imagine how Cohen, Trump . . . or anyone else could successfully stop CBS from airing the interview,” said Andrew Jay Schwartzman of Georgetown Law School. “Yes, it might cost her a million bucks, but that isn’t CBS’s problem.”

Nor does it appear to be holding Avenatti back. This week he seemed relentless, teasing the “60 Minutes” interview again with another photo — this time showing Cooper under a bank of lights staring across a television studio at Daniels.

 

[fraurosena]

Threatening violence to a woman is such a show of dignity and class, isn't it?

 

[Howl]

That Michael Avenatti! What a tease! This 60 Minutes may get more viewership than the last 8 Super Bowls, O.J.'s trial and election night combined.  *a frisson of anticipation shoots all the way through to my toes.  MY TOES!  Eleventy!!!1!1!11*

March 25th is a long time to wait, though.  Wish they'd just move it up to this Sunday.  tick tick tick

[Cartmann99]

Put Pepto-Bismol on your shopping list:

 

Edited to add: Hot damn, I have now reached the status of Pecan Thief! 

[onekidanddone]

On 3/13/2018 at 4:21 PM, AmazonGrace said:

Trumping All Night

Good Will Trumping

Art of the Squeal

Stormy Does West Wing 

Secret Services

The Deep State

All the President's Men

Beauty and the Pees

 

Make America Gag Again?

[onekidanddone]

Look for a huge distraction around 8:00 PM EDT. Like a war, or a "Presidential" address. Anything to preempt 60 minutes from showing. 

[GreyhoundFan]

56 minutes ago, Cartmann99 said:

Put Pepto-Bismol on your shopping list:

 

Edited to add: Hot damn, I have now reached the status of Pecan Thief! 

Actually, I think I would need something stronger, like Cerenia. Or a couple of large bottles of tequila.

[Howl]

24 minutes ago, onekidanddone said:

Look for a huge distraction around 8:00 PM EDT. Like a war, or a "Presidential" address. Anything to preempt 60 minutes from showing. 

Except for a Mueller firing.  I'm  GTG with anything but that.  I have the Channel 4 reports on Cambridge Analytica to keep me occupied until Sunday evening!

[Cartmann99]

5 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Actually, I think I would need something stronger, like Cerenia. Or a couple of large bottles of tequila.

You know how they have those dogs that are trained to alert their human that they are about to have a seizure? We need dogs that can alert us that a Trump dick pic is imminent and will jump up and block our view. Dachshunds, aka weiner dogs, would be the obvious choice for this lifesaving task. 

[fraurosena]

16 minutes ago, Cartmann99 said:

You know how they have those dogs that are trained to alert their human that they are about to have a seizure? We need dogs that can alert us that a Trump dick pic is imminent and will jump up and block our view. Dachshunds, aka weiner dogs, would be the obvious choice for this lifesaving task. 

Boy, am I ever glad with my two doxies! 

Here's Kella, who's a cuddly lapdog:

Spoiler

And here's Finn, who's our resident doofus.

Spoiler

 

[AmazonGrace]

Go Stormy! 

 

[laPapessaGiovanna]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I only watched part of the McDougal interview on CNN. If what she is saying is true, I feel bad for her, because she seemed to think she was special in Dumpy's eyes. The only person who is special to Dumpy is Dumpy. "Former Playboy model gives emotional account of alleged affair with Trump, apologizes to Melania"

Spoiler

Former Playboy model Karen McDougal spoke on camera for the first time about the 10-month affair she says she had with Donald Trump shortly after the birth of his youngest son, baring the relationship’s most intimate details and tracing its arc — from the moment she first met the future president to what she says was her decision to end the romance later — in an intensely personal interview broadcast on national television.

The hour-long interview on CNN marked a particularly sensational moment, for both Trump, as allegations about past affairs draw more scrutiny, and the media, for whom McDougal’s in-depth questioning from host Anderson Cooper was a prime-time event. If Trump’s presidency and the headlines it has generated have been considered a reality show, this was the grocery aisle tabloid rebuttal.

McDougal spoke about a physical relationship she says began in 2006, alleging Trump offered her money the first time they were intimate and choking up as she recounted the guilt she felt for being a party to an affair. She reflected on the connection she developed with the “sweet” man she said she fell in love with and unflinchingly recounted some of the romance’s most salacious details.

“When I look back where I was back then, I know it’s wrong,” McDougal said, choking back tears. “I’m really sorry for that.”

The interview came just days after McDougal filed a lawsuit against American Media Inc., which publishes the National Enquirer, in the attempt to void her agreement to sell the story’s rights to the company for $150,000 about three months before the election.

The affair took off in June 2006, McDougal said, which would have been just a few months after the birth of Trump’s 12-year-old son, Barron. The two met during a filming for “The Apprentice” at the Playboy Mansion, where McDougal, who was Playmate of the Year in 1998, was working, she said.

“He said hello and then throughout the night it was kind of obvious that there was an attraction,” McDougal said.

Trump asked her for her phone number at the end of the night, she said. By his next visit to Los Angeles, around his June 14 birthday, they had started speaking on the phone and had planned a “date” for dinner at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

Trump’s bodyguard, Keith Schiller, picked her up and drove her to a rear entrance at the hotel, she said.

“I’m thinking to myself, ‘Are we going to a room because I thought we were having dinner,’ ” McDougal said.

The two did have dinner — in a private bungalow at the hotel, she said.

“Then as the night ended,” she told Cooper, “we were intimate.”

McDougal said that at the end of the night Trump tried to hand her cash — an experience that she had never had before and one that left her feeling “terrible” and crying in the car ride home.

“The look on my face must have been so sad,” she said. “I looked at him and said that’s not me, I’m not that kind of girl.”

“I got over it, but it did hurt,” she said.

Still the relationship between the two blossomed into something far beyond a one-night stand, McDougal said. For 10 months, the couple saw each other at least five times a month at hotels, at Trump’s golf courses, a property in Bedminster, N.J., and even at his apartment at Trump Tower, McDougal said. Whenever she booked a flight or a hotel, Trump would reimburse her, to prevent a paper trail she assumed, McDougal told Cooper.

Even so, she felt they formed a genuine bond.

“There were real feelings between the two of us,” McDougal said, saying she considered and “maybe” even hoped that their relationship could lead to marriage. “He always told me that he loved me.”

Unlike the belligerent, invective-flinging character people see on television or Twitter, Trump was “charming,” and “caring,” said McDougal, who described herself as an avid Republican and proud Trump voter.

She described the guilt she felt visiting the businessman’s Trump Tower apartment where he showed her a room he said was Melania’s, where “she likes to have her alone time or to get away to read, or something like that.”

“That’s when I thought maybe they’re having issues,” she said. “I couldn’t wait to get out … Doing something wrong is bad enough but when you’re doing something wrong and you’re in the middle of someone’s home or bed or whatever, that just puts a little stab in your heart.”

She later met Melania Trump at an event, she said.

She said that the president was very proud of his daughter Ivanka and told McDougal she was “beautiful like her.” She says she decided to end the relationship in April 2007 because it was “tearing” her apart.

“What can you say except I’m sorry,” she said. “I wouldn’t want it done to me.”

The tone of the interview was serious, as McDougal reflected on a relationship with a man she said she cared for deeply. Cooper even pried into intimate details, such as whether the two used protection when they had sex. (The answer, if you must know, was no.)

The near-constant chaos and upheaval of the Trump administration has seemed at times to drown out other news events that would have been central scandals during previous presidencies. McDougal’s story has surfaced recently, after weeks of reports about his alleged affair with the adult-film star Stormy Daniels.

Daniels — who is scheduled for her own close-up with Anderson Cooper on the CBS program “60 Minutes” on Sunday — was paid $130,000 by Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, to keep silent about the story before the election. She has also filed a lawsuit to void the confidentiality agreement, arguing in part that it was never signed by Trump.

McDougal told Cooper that Daniels’s decision “made a little bit of an impact” on her decision to speak out.

The two women’s stories also appear to intersect.

McDougal described spending time with Trump at a 2006 golf tournament in Lake Tahoe — where Daniels has said she first met and formed a relationship with Trump.

“I knew he talked to ladies,” McDougal said, when asked by Cooper. “I thought I was the only one.”

Cooper asked her about a denial issued by then-campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks in 2016 that the affair claim was “totally untrue.”

“I think somebody’s lying and I can tell you it’s not me,” McDougal said.

McDougal said that she began discussions with AMI around the time that Trump secured the Republican nomination — not because she wanted to but because a friend had convinced her that she should own her story, which had started seeping out in rumors on social media. She considered sharing it with ABC’s news division, though they were not going to pay her, and she eventually backed out, she said.

Through negotiations with a lawyer that she had been connected with, Keith Davidson, AMI promised her the opportunity to write monthly columns for a couple of its magazines like Ok! and Star, and be featured on two covers, as part of a push to help her rebrand as an “older” model, she said.

And in return, the publishing company would get the rights to the story, she said.

McDougal says she knew that they planned to squash the story, perhaps as a favor to Trump, adding that she now believes that Cohen was involved — something alleged in her lawsuit, as well.

“What model wouldn’t want that?” she said of the deal she was offered. “It’s a win-win for me. I get the work and my story doesn’t have to come out.”

The suit claims that Davidson worked secretly with AMI and Cohen as “part of a broad effort to silence and intimidate” her.

The $150,000 McDougal was paid for her story was split nearly evenly between her and Davidson — 45 percent went to the lawyer, the complaint says.

Davidson said he could not comment because of attorney-client privilege.

The White House, Cohen and AMI did not immediately respond to requests for comment.