I'm surprised at the source ~ but working backward, in 2006, Melania was either pregnant with or had just given birth to Barron ~ ~ Sooz

Trump Lawyer Arranged $130,000 Payment for Adult-Film Star's Silence
The Wall Street Journal / Michael Rothfeld, Joe Palazzolo / 3 hrs ago

A lawyer for President Donald Trump arranged a $130,000 payment to a former adult-film star a month before the 2016 election as part of an agreement that precluded her from publicly discussing an alleged sexual encounter with Mr. Trump, according to people familiar with the matter.

Michael Cohen, who spent nearly a decade as a top attorney at the Trump Organization, arranged payment to the woman, Stephanie Clifford, in October 2016 after her lawyer negotiated the nondisclosure agreement with Mr. Cohen, these people said.

Ms. Clifford, whose stage name is Stormy Daniels, has privately alleged the encounter with Mr. Trump took place after they met at a July 2006 celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe, these people said. Mr. Trump married Melania Trump in 2005.

Mr. Trump faced other allegations during his campaign of inappropriate behavior with women, and vehemently denied them. In this matter, there is no allegation of a nonconsensual interaction.

“These are old, recycled reports, which were published and strongly denied prior to the election,” a White House official said, responding to the allegation of a sexual encounter involving Mr. Trump and Ms. Clifford. The official declined to respond to questions about an agreement with Ms. Clifford. It isn’t known whether Mr. Trump was aware of any agreement or payment involving her.

In a statement, Mr. Cohen didn’t address the $130,000 payment but said of the alleged sexual encounter that “President Trump once again vehemently denies any such occurrence as has Ms. Daniels.”

Mr. Cohen added in the statement, addressed to The Wall Street Journal: “This is now the second time that you are raising outlandish allegations against my client. You have attempted to perpetuate this false narrative for over a year; a narrative that has been consistently denied by all parties since at least 2011.”

The Journal previously reported that Ms. Clifford, 38 years old, had been in talks with ABC’s “Good Morning America” in the fall of 2016 about an appearance to discuss Mr. Trump, according to people familiar with the matter. In that article, the Journal reported the company that owns the National Enquirer agreed to pay $150,000 to a former Playboy centerfold model three months before the election for her story of an affair a decade earlier with the Republican presidential nominee, which the tabloid newspaper didn’t publish. The company said she was paid to write fitness columns and appear on magazine covers.

Mr. Cohen also sent a two-paragraph statement by email addressed “TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN” and signed by “Stormy Daniels” denying that she had a “sexual and/or romantic affair” with Mr. Trump.

“Rumors that I have received hush money from Donald Trump are completely false,” the statement said.

Ms. Clifford didn’t respond to multiple emails seeking comment.

After the agreement, Ms. Clifford’s camp complained the payment wasn’t being made quickly enough and threatened to cancel the deal, some of the people familiar with the matter said.

The payment was made to Ms. Clifford through her lawyer in the matter, Keith Davidson, with funds sent to Mr. Davidson’s client-trust account at City National Bank in Los Angeles, according to the people.

“I previously represented Ms. Daniels,” Mr. Davidson said, referring to Ms. Clifford’s stage name. “Attorney-client privilege prohibits me from commenting on my clients’ legal matters.”

A spokeswoman for City National Bank declined to comment.

The agreement with Ms. Clifford came as the Trump campaign confronted allegations from numerous women who described unwanted sexual advances and alleged assaults by Mr. Trump.

In October 2016, the Washington Post published a videotape made, but never aired, by NBC’s “Access Hollywood” in which Mr. Trump spoke of groping women.

Mr. Trump denied all allegations of inappropriate sexual conduct and apologized at the time for his remarks on the tape, calling them locker-room banter.

Mr. Cohen worked at the Trump Organization from 2007 until after the election. As Mr. Trump took office, Mr. Cohen said he would work in private practice and act as Mr. Trump’s personal attorney. “I am the fix-it guy,” he said in an interview in January 2017 before Mr. Trump’s inauguration.

Ms. Clifford has appeared in about 150 adult films, and was considered among the industry’s biggest stars when the then-27-year-old met Mr. Trump at the American Century Championship in 2006, held at Edgewood Tahoe golf course in Nevada.

Another adult-film star, Jessica Drake, later alleged in an October 2016 news conference that Mr. Trump kissed her and two other women without permission in a hotel suite after the same 2006 golf event.

“I did not sign [a nondisclosure agreement], nor have I received any money for coming forward,” Ms. Drake said this week in an emailed statement. “I spoke out because it was the right thing to do.”

A White House official responded to questions about Ms. Drake by referring to a previous statement by the Trump campaign, which called her account “totally false and ridiculous.”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-lawyer-arranged-dollar130000-payment-for-adult-film-stars-silence/ar-AAuC2oa?

Doesn't everybody hand out $130,000. over something that never happened?

Edit: Wonder how much she got for the non-encounter?

When is enough going to be enough?

Sidartha wrote:

When is enough going to be enough?

$130,000 apparently.

Here's some follow-up ~ ~ "live links" in original ~ Sooz

Questions surround Trump lawyer’s payment to adult-film star
01/15/18 10:40 AM
By Steve Benen

[Video, The Rachel Maddow Show, 1/12/18, 9:50 PM ET, "Trump lawyer paid porn star Stormy Daniels to hide affair: WSJ", accessible via the end link.]

The Wall Street Journal reported late Friday that Donald Trump’s lawyer “arranged a $130,000 payment to a former adult-film star a month before the 2016 election as part of an agreement that precluded her from publicly discussing an alleged sexual encounter with Mr. Trump.” The story, which was met with a series of denials that I detailed on Friday, didn’t generate quite as big a stir as I thought it might.

Imagine, for example, if Bill Clinton were a year into his first term when evidence emerged that his lawyer arranged a large payment to a former porn star a month before his election. Do you suppose the political world would take an interest in this, or would the Sunday shows ignore the story two days later (which is what happened yesterday)?

In normal times, this might be a presidency-defining controversy. In Trump’s America, the story struggles for attention with all the other controversies surrounding this White House.

That said, even if the salacious personal allegations are better left overlooked, there are some salient aspects of the story that are unrelated to whether or not Trump was unfaithful toward his third wife.

The Wall Street Journal’s report, for example, said Michael Cohen, the top attorney at the Trump Organization, arranged the payment to Stephanie Clifford, whose stage name is Stormy Daniels, following the negotiation of a non-disclosure agreement. We don’t know the source of the money, though the answer to the question could be problematic for the president: funds from Trump’s campaign or foundation, for example, couldn’t legally be used for this purpose.

What’s more, the New York Times reported these additional details over the weekend.


It was around this time that another woman, former Playboy centerfold Karen McDougal, sold the exclusive rights to the story about her alleged affair with Trump to American Media Inc., the company that owns the National Enquirer tabloid. Its owner is a Trump ally who never published the claims.

The Daily Beast, meanwhile, was reportedly informed late Friday that “porn star Jessica Drake is not allowed to discuss President Donald J. Trump on account of a non-disclosure agreement she signed barring her from any such talk.”

With all of this in mind, even if we ignore questions about Trump’s alleged personal failings, there are some lines of inquiry that probably deserve some follow-up:

* Just how many women from the adult-entertainment industry have signed non-disclosure agreements about their interactions with Trump?

* How many of them received compensation?

* What was the source of the money?

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/questions-surround-trump-lawyers-payment-adult-film-star#break

It's up to three ....

A third porn star just came forward to add a new layer to Trump’s latest scandal
PETER MELLADO

President Trump has now been linked to three porn stars over the last two days, as allegations of extramarital affairs with two of them first made during the campaign have resurfaced in spectacular fashion.

On the morning of January 12th, the Wall Street Journal reported that Michael Cohen, a long time lawyer for the Trump Organization and Trump family, paid porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet about a sexual encounter she and Donald Trump had back in 2006 – a year after he married current wife and first lady, Melania Trump.

A second porn star, Alana Evans, corroborated the encounter later that day, when she confirmed that Trump and Daniels invited her to join them in a threesome.

And now, the spotlight has shifted to a THIRD porn star ...

I'm not hearing a word about this on CNN. Curious....

Making sure it isn't shyte made up by Steve Bannon?

Porn stars Alana Evans, Stephanie Clifford, Jessica Drake and Melania Trump. Apparently our boy doesn't like to mess around with amateurs.

What I find interesting in this story is the almost total lack of any response or reaction from GOP/TPers, who tend to get histrionic about anything sex related ~ ~ emphasis/bolding below is mine, and there are some "live links" in the original ~ Sooz

When alleged hush money trumps personal improprieties
01/16/18 08:51 AM—Updated 01/16/18 09:21 AM
By Steve Benen

It’s been several days since the Wall Street Journal first reported that Donald Trump’s lawyer, shortly before the 2016 presidential election, arranged a $130,000 payment to a former adult-film star. The story was quickly met with a series of denials.

What it wasn’t met with was an around-the-clock, red-siren, screaming-all-caps feeding frenzy. In fact, much of the political world remained focused on other Trump-related controversies, and largely ignored Friday’s bombshell in the WSJ.

The New York Times’ Michelle Goldberg wrote a great column on this, noting the demise of ’90s-era standards about presidents and sex scandals, and the role of conservatives, eager to protect their political ally in the Oval Office, in killing off “the last remaining unspoken rules about presidential sexual ethics.”


As Goldberg explained, the left doesn’t much care about Trump’s personal sexual escapades, so long as his relationships were consensual. The right, suddenly discovering the value of moral relativism, appears to care even less because of conservatives’ marriage of convenience with Trump.

Indeed, the right made this bargain before the president was even elected. Conservatives knew precisely what they were getting by forging a partnership with a secular, thrice-married, casino-owning adulterer. They didn’t hesitate before the election and they see no value in looking back now.

And perhaps that’s a good thing. Maybe the political world has forged a new consensus about presidents and their private lives. Perhaps the American mainstream can separate with clear eyes the difference between a bad spouse and a politician, which is as it should be.

But can we still talk about that $130,000?

Not including the many women who accused Trump of sexual improprieties, we know of three women from the adult-entertainment industry who are alleged to have sexual encounters with Trump. Stormy Daniels reportedly received $130,000 and signed a non-disclosure agreement; former Playboy centerfold Karen McDougal sold the exclusive rights to her story to a Trump ally who buried the controversy; and Jessica Drake also signed a non-disclosure agreement.

What we don’t know is the sources of the alleged payments. If, for example, Trump used campaign funds, it would likely be the basis for a serious legal controversy.

What’s more, we learned quite a while ago that Trump used his charitable foundation as something of a piggy bank, using its resources to make illegal campaign contributions and make various legal problems go away. If he used foundation money to buy anyone’s silence, that too would raise awkward legal questions.

It may be a sign of cultural maturity that an alleged presidential sex scandal received widespread yawns, but that doesn’t change the fact that there are substantive questions surrounding this story that deserve answers.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/when-alleged-hush-money-trumps-personal-improprieties

The New York Times’ Michelle Goldberg wrote a great column on this, noting the demise of ’90s-era standards about presidents and sex scandals,

What demise? Republicans are still suffering from PTSD and can't stop talking about Bill Clinton getting a blow job from some woman who was not only of legal age and consented but initiated the encounter. That was worthy of impeachment and twenty years of therapy.

Grabem assaulting women, hiring hookers and paying off porn stars well that's no big deal especially since he's said he will make the rich richer and eventually, maybe a little of that will trickle down to us.

Trump's pee video illustrated the "trickle down" effect.

I'm waiting for someone to paint Trump naked, like that painting of Harper. Someone bought it for a sizable sum as I recall.

To quote GAT from the other place: "eeewwwwww"

Too late....

View Here

And now there's the Make America Horny Again tour

#peetus

This was only a matter of time ~ there are also rumors floating that the Ds might invite Stormy Daniels to the speech [a la the DiC interviewing Bill Clinton's accusers during the last campaign] ~ ~ some "live links" in the original ~ Sooz

Jimmy Kimmel snags Stormy Daniels for post-State of the Union interview
Daniels has been in the center of a media storm since news broke of her alleged affair with President Donald Trump.
Shira Tarlo • 01.26.2018 • 10:30 AM

Jimmy Kimmel announced on Twitter Thursday night that Stormy Daniels, the adult-film performer and erotic dancer who allegedly had an affair with President Donald Trump, will appear on his show, "Jimmy Kimmel Live!"

The television host said Daniels will join him for an interview Tuesday, January 30, after the president's State of the Union to Congress. "I am pleased to announce that the very gifted Stormy Daniels will be on Kimmel Tuesday 1/30 after the State of the Union. I have MANY QUESTIONS! #MAGA," Kimmel tweeted.


Variety later confirmed the report.

Daniels has been at the eye of the news storm since The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that Michael Cohen, a private attorney for Trump, had paid the adult-film star $130,000 in the weeks ahead of the 2016 presidential election in an agreement that would have her deny that she had an affair with the real-estate tycoon in 2006.

Other, more salacious details about their alleged tryst have surfaced since then. There are also lingering questions as to whether the contract she signed with Cohen was even legal.

Generally speaking, the religious right and the evangelicals Trump leaned on to win the 2016 election have given the president a pass on his alleged infidelities. Tony Perkins, the head of the influential Christian advocacy group the Family Research Council, went so far as to say, "We kind of gave [Trump]—'All right, you get a mulligan. You get a do-over here.'"

Following that revelation, and on the one-year anniversary of Trump's inauguration, the adult-film actress launched a new tour, "Make America Horny Again," at a South Carolina strip club.

The president's first State of the Union address to Congress takes place Tuesday at 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT. Daniels lands on Kimmel later that night.

https://www.salon.com/2018/01/26/jimmy-kimmel-snags-stormy-daniels-for-post-state-of-the-union-interview/

Getting weirder and weirder ~ who to believe ... him, her, or the $130,000 payment? ~ ~ Sooz

Trump’s Stormy Daniels controversy takes an unexpected turn
01/31/18 04:10 PM
By Steve Benen

[Video, The Rachel Maddow Show, 1/18/18, 9:50 PM ET, "Trump lawyer used shell company to pay porn star: WSJ", accessible via the end link.]

When we last checked in on Donald Trump’s Stormy Daniels controversy, a few core elements of the story had come into focus. It’s been widely reported, for example, that Trump’s lawyer paid a former porn star $130,000 – shortly before the 2016 presidential election – apparently in order to buy her silence about an alleged extramarital affair.

We then learned Trump’s lawyer made the payment through an LLC he quietly created in Delaware, where it’s easier to create business entities with minimal disclosures.

The story took a turn this week, when a press statement was issued in which Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, denied ever having been in a relationship with the president. And in case this story couldn’t get any weirder, last night, Daniels seemed to deny having anything to do with the statement issued in her name.


Pressed on the most recent statement, Daniels seemed to hesitate, before conceding, “I do not know where it came from.” (Her lawyer, however, said after the appearance that she had, in fact, signed the statement denying the affair.)

On the same show, Jimmy Kimmel asked about a possible non-disclosure agreement, and she evaded the question. The host responded that “if you didn’t have a non-disclosure agreement, you most certainly could say you don’t have an non-disclosure agreement, yes?”

Daniels responded, “You’re so smart, Jimmy.”

At this point, I can appreciate why there may be some ambiguity about whether Trump did or did not have an extramarital affair with this adult-film star. There are several denials from those involved, but there are questions about the validity of the statements, and there’s also a 2011 interview in which Daniels described her relationship with the future president.

But here’s the thing to remember: the alleged adultery may be the salacious part of the story, but it’s not the most important angle. What matters most is the money.

While we’ve seen plenty of denials about the affair, no one’s denied the $130,000. It’s the one part of the controversy that’s received no pushback from any of the people involved.

Who paid Stormy Daniels? Where’d the money come from?

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/trumps-stormy-daniels-controversy-takes-unexpected-turn

I'm waffling on WHO IS THE CREEPIEST ... Michael Cohen or the DiC himself ~ ~ Sooz

EDBLOG
Who Will Rid Me of This Meddlesome Stormy? The Michael Cohen Story
By Josh Marshall | February 14, 2018 10:05 am

As you may have seen last night, Michael Cohen, President Trump’s purported longtime personal lawyer, conceded that he did pay adult actress Stormy Daniels $130,000 just before the 2016 election. But there’s a catch. It was his money! Or so Cohen says. Neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign reimbursed him. “I am Mr. Trump’s longtime special counsel and I have proudly served in that role for more than a decade,” said Cohen in a statement released yesterday. “In a private transaction in 2016, I used my own personal funds to facilitate a payment of $130,000 to Ms. Stephanie Clifford. Just because something isn’t true doesn’t mean that it can’t cause you harm or damage. I will always protect Mr. Trump … Neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Ms. Clifford, and neither reimbursed me for the payment, either directly or indirectly. The payment to Ms. Clifford was lawful, and was not a campaign contribution or a campaign expenditure by anyone.”

As some have noted, the statement makes no mention of Donald Trump personally reimbursing Cohen out of his own pocket. You also have this weird phrasing of using his funds to “facilitate a payment.” (Cohen refused to answer any questions beyond the prepared statement.) There’s also no mention of when Cohen was promoted to the ridiculous new title of “special counsel.” The key point of the statement appears to be to keep the payment out of the Federal Election Commission’s purview. It may be a scandal regardless. But it’s not clear there’s any legal problem or that it’s anyone’s business as long as it’s not tied to regulated campaign spending. Regardless of all that, it may surprise you to learn that I find it entirely plausible that Cohen covered this payment himself and was not reimbursed in any way that is legally definable or forensically traceable.

What you have to understand is that Michael Cohen is not the President’s lawyer and never has been – not in any sense most people would understand the term and not in any way that is real. Michael Cohen lies through his teeth like most people breathe. So it’s entirely possible that Trump or various other entities made Cohen whole. But as someone who’s done a lot of research into Cohen and his decade-plus relationship with Donald Trump, I will say again: picking up this charge himself is entirely plausible.

Going on three years ago when I first started seeing Cohen on TV defending Trump, I figured he was just Trump’s punk lawyer. Especially his TV lawyer, the guy who goes on TV to talk shit on Trump’s behalf. He’s definitely that in a sense. But that really gives a very incomplete sense of who the guy is. You may be thinking: Maybe Trump can cut checks for 6-figure payoffs but not his lawyer. Not so. On his own, Cohen is a very, very wealthy man. Scale of his wealth? Just one example. Two and a half years ago he bought an apartment building on the Upper East Side for $58 million. That’s just one of his holdings. Cohen grew up on Long Island. But from his teenage years, he was immersed in New York’s Russian and Ukrainian immigrant community and had personal or family ties to people with ties to organized crime.

Cohen has a nominal law degree. But I’ve seen very little evidence he ever practiced law in any real sense, either for Trump or at any point in his career. What Cohen was was a businessman, in a number of businesses favored by the Russian/Ukrainian emigre community and where large sums of cash can be moved, often over borders, into cash intensive businesses: taxis, casino boats and real estate.

Cohen came to Trump’s attention in the first years of the century because he was buying up large numbers of units in Trump properties, for himself, his family, his Ukrainian immigrant in-laws. He made himself handy by helping to quell a shareholder revolt in one building. Trump saw that Cohen was a conduit for money from Russia and Ukraine. And Cohen wanted to be helpful. That’s how and why Trump brought Cohen into the Trump Organization.

I don’t doubt that Cohen, who has a law license, made ample use lawyer-client privilege. But in the sense people think of, he was never Trump’s lawyer. Not even in the Tom Hagen sense in which he sometimes presents himself. He worked on business deals. But mostly he took care of problems for Trump and served as a conduit for money. While that was happening, Cohen continued to build his own real estate mini-empire from his perch at the Trump Organization, working with his original sources of money and pull and adding the Trump association to operate on a larger scale. (I go deeper into various of the wile details in this post from a year ago.)

That was the essence of the relationship. Cohen brought in money and connections. He also made big money under the Trump Organization umbrella – not only by whatever he made from Trump directly but far more from the deals he was doing on his own operating in Trump’s orbit. One key part of the arrangement though was total loyalty and maximal expressions of loyalty, making messes go away. You can see this in how Cohen talks about his relationship with Trump and the mix of aggressive bullying and lavish toadying he shows when he discusses Trump on TV.

Explaining his relationship to Trump to ABC News Cohen said: “It means that if somebody does something Mr. Trump doesn’t like, I do everything in my power to resolve it to Mr. Trump’s benefit. If you do something wrong, I’m going to come at you, grab you by the neck and I’m not going to let you go until I’m finished.” As he said in his statement on the Stormy Daniels payment, “I will always protect Mr. Trump.”

In 2015 when the Daily Beast unearthed records of Ivana Trump accusing Trump of raping her in a maniacal rage over a botched scalp reduction surgery, Cohen issued a series of threats against the reporters if they published their story: “I will make sure that you and I meet one day while we’re in the courthouse. And I will take you for every penny you still don’t have. And I will come after your Daily Beast and everybody else that you possibly know,” Cohen said. “So I’m warning you, tread very fucking lightly, because what I’m going to do to you is going to be fucking disgusting. You understand me? You write a story that has Mr. Trump’s name in it, with the word ‘rape,’ and I’m going to mess your life up… for as long as you’re on this frickin’ planet… you’re going to have judgments against you, so much money, you’ll never know how to get out from underneath it.”

Doing conspicuous favors and fixing things is in the nature of this bizarrely public toady-chieftain relationship. Read through Cohen’s interviews. You’ll find it’s replete with mixes of mafia tough guy talk and zany levels of conspicuous self-abnegation. It’s all theater at some level. But I think to a great degree it’s genuine. It’s the guy’s identity, like the way a top captain thinks about the mob boss he serves. Who will rid me of this meddlesome Stormy? Did I mention that Cohen and Trump’s mafia business partner Felix Sater were childhood friends long before they both ended up as top Trump business partners right around the same time? Well, that’s true too. In the scale of money both Trump and Cohen operate at, covering the $130,000 payment himself seems entirely plausible as something Cohen would do as part of the larger relationship. He probably did get paid back somehow or other. But I think it’s totally plausible he didn’t. He’d love to be that guy who made the problem go away. Doing Trump a solid like that would be something he’d happily do. It’s the basis of their relationship. He’d get paid back in other ways.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/who-will-rid-me-of-this-meddlesome-stormy-the-michael-cohen-story

Odd how it went from "it never happened" to this, eh?

If it was on behalf of Grabem wouldn't it count as a campaign contribution? Would it be legal?

Did they have a threesome?

And it makes no mention of whether he received an additional bonus to cover his "out of pocket expense" (said additional bonus to be billed back to whatever entity pays Trump's legal fees)

Melania's probably thinking to herself: "Wow! A hundred and thirty thousand a pop! Why didn't I think of that?"