How Playboy Model Blew Lid On Donald Trump Payments

A Playboy model's discontent over a writing contract exposed Donald Trump's alleged hush money payments, a legal analyst has said.

Karen McDougal had been promised a job as a National Enquirer columnist if she stayed quiet about her alleged affair with Donald Trump, said Lisa Rubin. McDougal became increasingly disillusioned when Enquirer publisher David Pecker failed to print her articles. She later sued for breach of contract, which brought the payments to the surface, Rubin added.

Speaking on Inside With Jen Psaki on MSNBC on Sunday, legal analyst Rubin added that the columnist position was "all a ruse" by Pecker, a long-time friend of the former president and former chairman, president and CEO of American Media Inc. (AMI), the parent company of the Enquirer.

Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, is the first former president in United States history to stand trial in a criminal case. He has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records.

The prosecution seeks to prove that before the 2016 presidential election, Trump paid, or discussed paying, two women—McDougal and adult film star Stormy Daniels—not to disclose his alleged affairs with them. He denies affairs with either woman.

Rubin said McDougal was offered work as a columnist and to do red carpet interviews with Radar Online, which was also owned by AMI.

She said that McDougal took the offer "very, very seriously" but "they had done it all to silence her," Rubin said.

Rubin said Pecker tried to skirt campaign finance laws by offering McDougal the job.

"He knew that paying her off to suppress her story with the goal of promoting Trump's election was unlawful. So what he did, in that agreement to purchase up her story, he provided that she would do columns for the National Enquirer or serve as red carpet interviewer for Radar Online, one of [AMI's] properties, and the like," Rubin said.

"That was all a ruse, although a ruse that Karen McDougal herself took very very seriously and that's what posed problems for them eventually because she wanted them to make good on that portion of the agreement and really they had done it all along to silence her."

Newsweek sought email comment from Trump, Pecker and McDougal on Monday.

AMI allegedly paid McDougal $150,000 in 2016 for a non-disclosure agreement in which she would agree not to publicly discuss her alleged affair with Trump. As part of that contract, she was offered a columnist position.

Pecker testified at Trump's hush money trial that he told Trump in January 2017, the same month Trump was inaugurated as president, that McDougal "is writing her articles. She's quiet. She's fine." He recalled that Trump thanked him "for handling the McDougal situation."

In March, 2018, McDougal sued AMI to be released from her agreement, claiming breach of contract because her columns weren't being used.

In the same month, Stormy Daniels sued to be released from the $130,000 non-disclosure agreement she signed with Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen.