Legal analyst Lisa Rubin revealed that Playboy model Karen McDougal’s discontent with a writing contract exposed alleged hush money payments made by former President Donald Trump. McDougal was promised a job as a National Enquirer columnist if she remained silent about her alleged affair with Trump, but became disillusioned when her articles were not published. This led to a breach of contract lawsuit that brought the payments to light. The columnist position offered to McDougal was described as a ruse by Enquirer publisher David Pecker, who was a friend of Trump and the former CEO of American Media Inc., the Enquirer’s parent company.
Trump, who is the first former president in U.S. history to face criminal charges, has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records. The prosecution is attempting to prove that before the 2016 presidential election, Trump made or discussed payments to McDougal and adult film star Stormy Daniels to conceal alleged affairs with them. Trump denies having affairs with either woman. The alleged payment to McDougal came to light when she grew discontented with the National Enquirer contract, which included an offer for her to work as a columnist and do red carpet interviews for Radar Online, another AMI property owned by Pecker.
McDougal signed a non-disclosure agreement in which she agreed not to publicly discuss her alleged affair with Trump. As part of the agreement, she was offered the columnist position, for which she took the offer seriously. However, Rubin stated that Pecker attempted to bypass campaign finance laws by offering McDougal the job, with the intention of silencing her to promote Trump’s election. When McDougal sued AMI for breach of contract in March 2018, claiming that her columns were not being utilized, the payments and hush money scheme were brought to further public attention.
AMI allegedly paid McDougal $150,000 in 2016 for the non-disclosure agreement. Pecker testified at Trump’s hush money trial that he informed Trump in January 2017 that McDougal was writing her articles and was quiet, to which Trump expressed gratitude for handling the situation. In the same month, Stormy Daniels also filed a lawsuit to be released from the $130,000 non-disclosure agreement she signed with Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen. Newsweek reached out for comments from Trump, Pecker, and McDougal but did not receive a response, highlighting the ongoing legal and ethical implications surrounding the hush money payments and attempts to silence the women involved.
