The seeds of the impeachment of Donald J. Trump by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office were planted 17 years ago, at a celebrity golf tournament in Nevada, where he met Stormy Daniels in July 2006.
At the time, Trump was the 60-year-old star of “The Apprentice,” a show in which contestants competed through a test of their business acumen. She was 27 years old and was a porn star and director.
According to Daniels’ version, Trump invited her to his hotel room for dinner. While they were talking, he told her that he could invite her to her show and that night they had intimate relations. Trump denies that this happened.
According to Daniels, Trump called her occasionally after that night, saying “honey.” They saw each other at least twice in 2007, but they were no longer intimate and Trump never took her to the “Apprentice.”
In 2011, when Trump explored the possibility of running for president, Daniels, who was upset that he never followed through on what he promised her, decided to sell the story.
Through an agent, she negotiated a $15,000 settlement with Life & Style, a celebrity magazine, giving them an interview and passing a lie detector test.
But when the magazine called Trump’s company for comment, his lawyer Michael Cohen threatened to sue, ending the story.
In the spring of 2016, when Trump did officially run for president, Daniels’ agent contacted the media, including The National Enquirer, to sell the story again.
The dynamic changed a month before the election. On October 7, 2016, The Washington Post released a recording of “Access Hollywood,” in which Trump spoke into an open microphone and described in lewd terms how he groped women.
Daniels’ agent began negotiations with The Inquirer, whose editor Davd Pecker was a friend of Trump and promised to buy and suppress negative stories about him during his campaign, but Pecker refused to pay Daniels.
Enquirer editor Dylan Howard connected Cohen with Daniels’ attorney and they negotiated a $130,000 hush deal three days after the recording surfaced on “Access Hollywood.”
Cohen said Trump approved the deal. After several weeks, Cohen withdrew the money from his personal credit account and turned it over to Daniels’ attorney. Cohen and Daniels signed the document. Trump did not.
Daniels was silent, and Trump won the election. After Trump became president, his company reimbursed Cohen for the money and falsely recorded the payments as legal fees.
