Let me speak, says Playmate alleging affair
A FORMER Playboy model who says she had an affair with President Trump has filed a lawsuit to break a confidentiality agreement that bars her from speaking publicly about the alleged tryst.
Karen McDougal, Playboy’s 1998 Playmate of the Year, sued the parent company of The National Enquirer to get out of the nondisclosure pact.
The parent company, American Media Inc., paid McDougal $150,000 in 2016 for the rights to her story about the alleged affair in a deal that prohibits her from sharing it elsewhere. AMI, led by close Trump friend David Pecker, never published the story.
AMI worked secretly with Trump’s personal attorney and fixer Michael Cohen to buy McDougal’s silence, according to the suit filed Tuesday in Los Angeles.
The suit, first reported by The New York Times, says AMI has threatened McDougal with financial ruin if she talks with the news media. “I just want the opportunity to set the record straight and move on with my life, free from this company, its executives, and its lawyers,” McDougal said. LONG BEFORE signing a “hush agreement,” porn star Stormy Daniels took a lie detector test about her sexual relationship with Donald Trump — and the examiner found a more than 99% probability she was truthful when she said that they had unprotected sex in 2006.
Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, took the polygraph test in Las Vegas on May 19, 2011, according to a copy of the exam obtained by the Daily News.
The X-rated actress took the test at the request of InStyle magazine, which had conducted a lengthy interview with her about her year-long affair with Trump. The interview was not published at time because Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen threatened to sue the magazine.
Daniels, 39, recently filed a suit demanding that her “hush agreement” be nullified because Trump never signed it. She has offered to return the $130,000 that Cohen paid her in exchange for her silence about the extramarital affair. Daniels’ attorney, Michael Avenatti, provided The News with a photo of Daniels taking the polygraph, stressing that it should put any ambiguity to bed.
“When this is over, the American people will know the truth about the relationship and the coverup,” Avenatti said.