Trump’s troubles deepen with report

New Yorker article exposes another alleged affair and payment

President Donald Trump’s political troubles with alleged extramarital affairs deepened Friday with publication of new details of his reported sexual relationship with a former Playboy model.

In handwritten notes accompanying a Ronan Farrow article in the New Yorker, Karen McDougal, Playboy’s 1998 Playmate of the Year, recalled having sex with Trump in 2006, a few months after his wife Melania gave birth to their son Barron.

Trump and McDougal met at a pool party at the Playboy Mansion, where Trump was taping an episode of his television show “The Apprentice,” McDougal wrote.

The New Yorker article, citing previously undisclosed texts, emails and legal records, elaborates on a Wall Street Journal report in 2016 about a convoluted deal requiring McDougal to keep quiet about the alleged affair.

It included a $150,000 payment to McDougal from American Media Inc., the publisher of the National Enquirer, which never printed her story about Trump. David Pecker, the chairman and CEO of AMI, is a close friend of the president.

McDougal, who confirmed the authenticity of her notes in an interview with the New Yorker, said she was speaking out in part because of the #MeToo movement.

“Every girl who speaks is paving the way for another,” she told the magazine.

A White House spokesperson told the New Yorker that Trump “never had a relationship with McDougal.”

McDougal’s comments appeared to buttress the accounts of two other women who said Trump pursued them for sex in the early years of his marriage to Melania Trump. Both cases have sparked legal action against the president.

Trump lawyer Michael Cohen told the New York Times this week that he used “personal funds to facilitate a payment of $130,000” just before the November 2016 election to porn actress Stephanie Clifford, whose stage name is Stormy Daniels. In return, Clifford reportedly agreed to keep quiet about her affair with Trump, who denied it ever occurred.

Common Cause has filed a Federal Election Commission complaint alleging the payment was an illegal campaign contribution, which Cohen denies.

Orange County restaurateur Summer Zervos, a former contestant on “The Apprentice,” has accused Trump of trying to force himself on her in 2006. She filed a defamation suit against him after he called her a liar.

All three women say their interactions with Trump included encounters in a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel.