On Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Michael Cohen, the longtime lawyer for President Donald J. Trump, arranged a $130,000 hush payment to porn star Stormy Daniels one month prior to the 2016 presidential election.
According to the Journal, the payment was made “as part of an agreement that precluded her from publicly discussing an alleged sexual encounter with Mr. Trump.” Daniels (given name: Stephanie Clifford) had reportedly been in talks with both ABC’s Good Morning America about going public with the allegations.
The Daily Beast had also been in protracted talks with Daniels about arranging an interview after three sources—including fellow porn star Alana Evans—told The Daily Beast that Daniels and Trump were involved. She ultimately backed out on Nov. 3, just five days before the 2016 election.
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Cohen on Friday did not address the alleged payout to Daniels but provided the following statement to The Daily Beast: “These rumors have circulated time and again since 2011. President Trump once again vehemently denies any such occurrence as has Ms. Daniels.” The attorney also provided a letter dated Jan. 10, 2018, allegedly signed by Daniels, that denied any “sexual and/or romantic affair” with Trump or the receipt of any “hush money” from Trump.
Daniels’ story would have come on the heels of the porn star Jessica Drake coming forward in late October 2016 to accuse Trump of kissing her without consent and offering her $10,000 in exchange for sex in 2006. Then, on Nov. 4, 2016, the Journal unearthed documents revealing that the Trump-friendly rag National Enquirer had shelled out $150,000 to Playboy centerfold Karen McDougal for a tell-all about her alleged 10-month affair with The Donald from 2006 to 2007. They never ran the piece.
If Drake and McDougal are to be believed, their encounters with Trump took place in the months after Melania gave birth to the Trumps’ youngest son, Barron, in March 2006.
According to three sources with knowledge of the matter, Trump also engaged in a curious relationship during this period with another porn star: Stormy Daniels.
Daniels met Trump at the same event Drake claims she did: the July 2006 American Century Celebrity Golf Championship at the Edgewood Tahoe in Stateline, Nevada. Trump took part in the A-list golf tourney, competing alongside the likes of NFL QBs Ben Roethlisberger and Drew Brees. Daniels was on-site working a gifting suite, doling out merch and greeting guests as a representative of her adult company Wicked Pictures, alongside Drake. She had by then established herself as a big name in the XXX biz, even making a brief appearance as herself in the 2005 Judd Apatow hit The 40-Year-Old Virgin.
Trump posed for a photo with Daniels at the event, which she later posted to her MySpace page.
According to fellow porn star Alana Evans—who was not only Daniels’ neighbor and close friend at the time, but also happened to be staying in the area—Daniels confided in her that she and Trump were more than just friends.
“It was the second day of our trip, we were in a hotel with a tattoo parlor, and the hotel had huge windows so you could see people outside. When I saw Stormy, I was like WTF? I opened the door, called out to her, and she joined me while [my colleague] got a tattoo,” recalls Evans. “Stormy said she met Donald Trump and then tells me about the golf tournament and how she’s supposed to hang out with him later that night, and she invited me. Stormy said Donald knew exactly who she was and wanted to meet her.”
Later that evening after returning to her hotel room, Evans said Daniels kept calling, asking her to come join the party. But Evans wasn’t interested and made up reasons not to go.
“Stormy calls me four or five times, by the last two phone calls she’s with Donald [Trump] and I can hear him, and he’s talking through the phone to me saying, ‘Oh come on Alana, let’s have some fun! Let’s have some fun! Come to the party, we’re waiting for you.’ And I was like, ‘OMG it’s Donald Trump!’ Men like him scare me because they have so much power and this was way before his presidential nomination. So I bailed on them and turned my phone off.”
Evans said she talked to Daniels the next day, apologized for bailing, and asked her how the night went. “She tells me, ‘All I’m going to say is: I ended up with Donald in his hotel room. Picture him chasing me around his hotel room in his tighty-whities.’ I was like, ‘Oh I really didn’t need to hear that!’ Then she said he offered her keys to his condos in Florida, and I was like, ‘Wow guess you had a good night,’ and that was the last we ever spoke of it.”
The Daniels-Trump relationship was also confirmed by an additional source that works closely with Daniels, who spoke to The Daily Beast on condition of anonymity, as well as by a third source in the adult industry.
Rumors of Daniels’ strange relationship with Trump first emerged on the gossip website TheDirty.com in October 2011. The site, run by Nik Richie (real name: Hooman Karamian), ran a post titled: “World Exclusive: Donald Trump Cheats on His Wife Melania Trump While She Was Pregnant.” In it, an anonymous tipster wrote to the site claiming that: “Donald Trump is the scum of the earth! Not only did he break up my friend’s marriage, but he also cheated on Melania Trump as she was pregnant with his child. My friend had sex with Donald after one of his golfing events and he lured her to multiple hotels [sic] rooms after that. My friend wants to speak with you directly because she is in fear that Donald Trump will ruin her life more than he already has.”
In a follow-up post, Richie wrote, “I know you cheated on your wife with Stephanie Gregory Clifford aka Stormy Daniels and now the world knows.”
TheDirty.com has found itself in the middle of numerous tabloid scandals in the past. In 2009, the site published several nude photos of Miss USA contestant Carrie Prejean, which eventually led to then-pageant-owner Trump stripping her of her Miss California title. And in 2013, the site posted several flirty online sexts—including a dick pic—from New York City mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner to a woman under the internet handle “Carlos Danger,” prompting immediate ownership of the sexts by Weiner.
Daniels retained an attorney and filed a takedown notice against Richie and TheDirty.com. Though it didn’t accuse Richie of fabricating the claim, it did allege that Richie and the site were guilty of “unauthorized use of [Daniels’] name and celebrity.” Soon thereafter, Richie pulled the story from his site—only to republish it late last year.
According to The Smoking Gun, Daniels was married to Michael Mosny at the time, who told the publication that his then-wife had a close relationship with Trump, who’d allegedly promised her a part on his reality-competition program The Apprentice. Mosny claimed that Trump would phone their Los Angeles home frequently to talk with Daniels, and that he invited her to numerous events—including the January 2007 launch of Trump vodka (where she was photographed), the Miss USA pageant in March of that year at the Kodak Theatre in L.A., and that they’d even met one night at the Beverly Hills Hotel.
But Mosny also told TSG that he was “not under the impression” that Daniels had a romantic affair with Trump, adding, “It would be surprising, but not shocking.” Daniels and Mosny, it should be noted, had a very public falling out after she was hit with a 2009 domestic violence charge for striking him several times in a fit of rage—around the same time the porn hall of famer was mulling a Senate run in her home state of Louisiana.
Neither Daniels nor the White House immediately responded to requests to comment for this story.
—with additional reporting by Brandy Zadrozny and Asawin Suebsaeng
Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this article incorrectly said that Daniels had also reportedly been in talks with the parent company of The National Enquirer. The Daily Beast regrets this error.
