Trump payoff role detailed
Court records released yesterday show President Donald Trump took part in a flurry of calls in the weeks before the 2016 election as aides and allies scrambled to pay porn star Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about an alleged affair.
The documents detailing calls and text messages were made public as federal prosecutors closed their investigation into the payoff — and a similar payment to Playboy model Karen McDougal — with no plans to charge anyone in the scandal beyond Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen.
The decision was made not to bring additional charges, according to two people briefed on the matter.
The US Attorney’s Office in Manhattan declined to comment and did not explain its decision not to prosecute anyone else. US Justice Department policy prohibits the indictment of a sitting president.
Yesterday, Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow welcomed the closing of the investigation into the ‘‘ridiculous’’ allegations and denied anew that the president broke campaign finance law.
The newly unsealed court papers, consisting of search warrant applications, offered tantalising new details about the campaign’s frenetic efforts to quash stories about the alleged affairs.
The documents cite records showing Trump spoke on the phone with Cohen at least five times between October 8 and October 28 as Trump’s campaign rushed to keep a lid on tales of his alleged misconduct in the closing weeks of the campaign.
In the series of calls that began at 7.20pm on October 8, Trump, Cohen and Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks spoke together on the phone for several minutes, followed immediately by a series of calls between Cohen and David Pecker, president of American Media Inc, the parent company of the National Enquirer, and the company’s chief content officer, Dylan Howard. Prosecutors have said Pecker, a friend of Trump’s, had offered to use his company to bury negative stories in a practice known as ‘‘catch and kill.’’
Cohen then phoned Trump again at 8.03pm. That was followed by more calls minutes later between Howard and Cohen, and then a text from Howard to Cohen that read: ‘‘Keith will do it.’’
The US attorney’s office said ‘‘Keith’’ referred to Daniels’ lawyer, Keith Davidson. –APl