The former president’s meeting with a porn star at a golf event in Utah kicked off a scandal that has led to a criminal indictment
The Stormy Daniels affair, which this week made Donald Trump the first US president ever to be criminally indicted, first reached the White House in February 2017.
“So picture this scene,” Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, said in congressional testimony two years later. “One month into his presidency, I’m visiting President Trump in the Oval Office for the first time.
“It’s truly awe-inspiring, he’s showing me around and pointing to different paintings, and he says something to the effect of … ‘Don’t worry, Michael, your January and February reimbursement cheques are coming. They were FedExed from New York and it takes a while for that to get through the White House system.’”
“As he promised, I received the first cheque for the reimbursement of $70,000 not long thereafter.”
But what Cohen has described as “a biblical-level sex scandal” involving those cheques, which reimbursed a hush money payment to a porn star, had actually begun years before and has finally come to a head years later with Trump running for the White House again.
How did it all happen?
Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, is a star in the world of adult film. In 2006, when she was 27, she attended a celebrity golf event in Utah, where she met Donald Trump. Then 60, he was a New York real estate billionaire and a reality TV star, via the NBC show The Apprentice.
According to Daniels’ memoir, Full Disclosure, she spanked Trump with a copy of Forbes magazine featuring him on the cover. He said she reminded him of his daughter, Ivanka, and floated a slot on The Apprentice. Trump also reassured Daniels that he and his wife, Melania, who has just given birth to a son, slept in separate beds.
“Oh fuck,” Daniels thought. “Here we go.”
They had sex.
According to Daniels, the two met again – once repairing to a Beverly Hills hotel room to discuss Trump’s fear of sharks. But they never had sex again.
