NO NEW CHARGES OVER PAYMENTS

Prosecution closes probe into Stormy Daniels, Karen McDougal scandal.

NEW YORK» Court records released Thursday show that President Donald Trump took part in a flurry of phone calls in the weeks before the 2016 election as his close 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 probe 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.

Federal prosecutors in New York said in a court filing that they investigated whether other people gave false statements or otherwise obstructed justice. In the end, the decision was made not to bring additional charges, according to two people briefed on the matter.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Manhattan section of New York declined to comment and did not explain its decision not to prosecute anyone else. U.S. Justice Department policy prohibits the indictment of a sitting president.

The White House had no comment on the latest documents. Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow on Thursday 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 tantalizing new details about the campaign’s frenetic efforts to quash stories about the alleged affairs. The documents cite records showing that Trump spoke on the phone with Cohen at least five times between Oct. 8 and Oct. 28 as Trump’s campaign rushed to keep a lid on tales of his alleged misconduct in the closing weeks of the campaign.

Cohen pleaded guilty last year to campaign finance violations and other offenses and is serving a three-year prison sentence. He has long maintained that Trump directed him to orchestrate the payoffs to the two women.