THE National Enquirer paid a Playboy model $150,000 for the story of her alleged affair with Donald Trump but failed to run the story.

Karen McDougal insists she had a 10-month affair with the Republican candidate in 2006, a year after he married third wife Melania, according to the Wall Street journal.

The National Enquirer reportedly paid McDougal, the 1998 Playmate of the year, six figures for the information, yet never published any of the allegations.

McDougal and American Media Inc, which owns the National Enquirer, reportedly agreed to the transaction in early August, according to the Wall Street Journal.

American Media Inc claimed in a statement that the $150,000 was for the exclusive life rights to any story related to a relationship McDougal may have had with a married man.

It is also believed to have covered payment for fitness columns written by her.

The National Enquirer has supported presidential candidate Trump throughout his bid for the White House.

In a statement, the company said: "AMI has not paid people to kill damaging stories about Mr Trump."

In a statement to the Wall Street Journal, AMI CEO David Pecker said it was known that he and Trump are friends.

But he claimed the publication is impartial and used the example of the National Enquirer's coverage of Trump's affair with Marla Maples while he was married to his first wife Ivana as proof.

Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks said the alleged affair with McDougal was "totally untrue" and said the campaign had no knowledge of a possible agreement with the ex-Playmate. </s> The company that owns the National Enquirer, a backer of Donald Trump, agreed to pay $150,000 to a former Playboy centerfold model for her story of an affair a decade ago with the Republican presidential nominee, but then didn’t publish it, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal and people familiar with the matter.

The tabloid-newspaper publisher reached an agreement in early August with Karen McDougal, the 1998 Playmate of the Year. American Media Inc., which owns the Enquirer, hasn’t published anything about what she has told friends was a consensual romantic relationship she had with Mr. Trump in 2006. At the time, Mr. Trump was married to his current wife, Melania.

Quashing stories that way is known in the tabloid world as “catch and kill.”

In a written statement, the company said it wasn’t buying Ms. McDougal’s story for $150,000, but rather two years’ worth of her fitness columns and magazine covers as well as exclusive life rights to any relationship she has had with a then-married man. “AMI has not paid people to kill damaging stories about Mr. Trump,” the statement said.

Hope Hicks, a Trump campaign spokeswoman, said of the agreement with Ms. McDougal: “We have no knowledge of any of this.” She said that Ms. McDougal’s claim of an affair with Mr. Trump was “totally untrue.”

Click for more from The Wall Street Journal. </s> President Trump’s personal lawyer and confidant Michael Cohen negotiated a settlement for a top GOP fundraiser who impregnated a Playboy model, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

Cohen negotiated the deal, worth $1.6 million, on behalf of Elliott Broidy, a California-based venture capitalist, close ally of President Trump, and the deputy finance chair of the Republican National Committee. Cohen is a national deputy finance chairman for the RNC. The payment was negotiated towards the end of 2017, according to the Journal.

Broidy in a statement to the Wall Street Journal confirmed the affair with the unnamed woman and that the woman informed him she had become pregnant.

“She alone decided that she did not want to continue with the pregnancy and I offered to help her financially during this difficult period,” Broidy said.

The deal was negotiated by the same players involved in a October 2016 $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels, an ex-porn star who claims to have had a one-night stand with Trump in 2006. Cohen arranged for that payment, a transaction Trump has denied involvement in. Daniels at the time of the payment was being represented by Keith Davidson, the same attorney who represented the woman in the Broidy negotiations, according to the Journal.

The FBI raided Cohen’s office, home and hotel on Monday. The search warrant reportedly sought information related to the Daniels payment, as well as a $150,000 payment by National Enquirer’s parent company in 2016 to buy the rights of claims made by another Playboy model, Karen McDougal that she had an affair with Trump. National Enquirer never ran McDougal’s allegations and gave her a fitness column instead, prompting speculation that the payment was intended to keep her allegations from coming out in what is known in the tabloid world as a “catch and kill.” National Enquirer’s parent company, American Media Inc. is run by David Pecker, a longtime friend of Trump’s.

It’s not clear what role, if any, Cohen had in that transaction. </s> NEW YORK – The FBI raid on President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen sought information that included payments allegedly made to keep women silent about affairs with Trump more than a decade ago.

A source familiar with the matter told CNN Tuesday that a focus of the raid was to seek records on the deal set up between ex-Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal and a company that reportedly paid her amid the 2016 presidential campaign cycle to keep her account from publication.

The warrant also sought records regarding the deal with porn star Stormy Daniels, another woman who alleges an affair with Trump and was paid to keep her story quiet. Cohen is in a legal dispute over a hush agreement Daniels signed before the 2016 campaign to keep quiet about the alleged affair.

McDougal filed a lawsuit last month against American Media Inc., the company that owns The National Enquirer, to be released from an agreement with the company.

Shortly before the presidential election, the Wall Street Journal published a story saying American Media Inc. paid $150,000 to McDougal, but did not run her story in a tabloid maneuver known as “catch and kill.” The contract, according to the Journal, did not require the Enquirer to run the story and required McDougal’s silence.

The New York Times was first to report the inclusion of McDougal in the warrant. Representatives for Trump have denied both McDougal and Daniels’ accounts.

A corporate spokesman for American Media Inc. provided a statement to CNN in response to the suit last month, saying McDougal “has been free to respond to press inquiries about her relationship with President Trump since 2016” and that the company had not “silenced” her.

The search warrant behind Monday’s raids of Cohen also included a request for documents related to Cohen’s ownership of taxi medallions, two sources familiar with the matter tell CNN.

Cohen has held numerous New York City medallions in his portfolio, according to records, though the value has been diminished since the onset of Uber and Lyft.

There were various sections to the request regarding information connected to payments to Daniels and communications with Trump and his campaign, one of the sources said. Another source said Monday that the search included bank records.

There were also what one source said were other issues that could be unrelated to Daniels, including smaller investments.

In addition, the warrant said it related in part to election laws.

Cohen admitted in February that he had facilitated a payment to Daniels, although he has denied the validity of the alleged affair. Trump said when asked last week that he did not know about the payment and referred other questions about the matter to Cohen.

“Michael is my attorney,” Trump said. “You’ll have to ask Michael.”

Revelations about the payment have prompted widespread scrutiny and some legal questions, including complaints to the Justice Department and Federal Election Commission, saying the payment to Daniels could constitute violations of campaign finance law.

Both McDougal and Daniels have gone public with their stories despite the agreements they are fighting that they say kept them silent. McDougal said she and Trump had an extended affair from 2006-2007, and Daniels said she also had sex with Trump in 2006 and alleged she was later threatened to stay quiet about it.

The FBI raided Cohen’s office on Monday, Cohen’s attorney Stephen Ryan confirmed, and a source familiar with the matter said Monday’s raids included the Loews Regency hotel where Cohen has been staying. The Wall Street Journal reportedthe raid included Cohen’s home.

Ryan said in a statement that the US Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York had executed “a series of search warrants,” and that federal prosecutors had told him it stemmed partially from a referral by the office of special counsel Robert Mueller.

Trump lashed out at news of the searches, calling it “ridiculous” and “an attack on our country.”

His anger continued through Tuesday morning, when he apparently referred to the special counsel investigation as a “total witch hunt.” </s> President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer negotiated a deal in late 2017 to pay $1.6 million to a former Playboy model who said she was impregnated by a top Republican fundraiser, according to people familiar with the matter. Michael Cohen, whose office, home and hotel room were raided by federal agents this week, arranged the payments to the woman on behalf of Elliott Broidy, a deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee with ties to Mr. Trump.

….The deal, which hasn’t previously been reported, prohibits the Los Angeles woman from disclosing her alleged relationship with Mr. Broidy in exchange for $1.6 million to be paid to her over two years in quarterly installments, these people said. The first payment was due Dec. 1, according to one of the people. </s> A major donor with close ties to the White House resigned today as deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee after the revelation that he had agreed to pay $1.6 million to a former Playboy model who became pregnant during an affair.

A major donor with close ties to the White House resigned today as deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee after the revelation that he had agreed to pay $1.6 million to a former Playboy model who became pregnant during an affair.

The deal was arranged by President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer and fixer, Michael D. Cohen.

Under the terms of the deal, the Republican donor, Elliott Broidy, would pay the woman in installments over the course of two years, and in return, she would agree to stay silent about their relationship, two people with knowledge of the arrangement told The New York Times. The deal was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

The lawyer for the woman, Keith M. Davidson, also represented two women who were paid during the presidential campaign for their silence about alleged affairs with Trump — a former Playboy model, Karen McDougal, who sold the rights to her story to American Media Inc., and Stephanie Clifford, the pornographic actress known as Stormy Daniels, who received a payment of $130,000 that Cohen said came out of his own pocket.

The FBI raided Cohen’s Manhattan office and hotel room Monday seeking business records, emails and documents relating to those two agreements, as well as Cohen’s work for the Trump Organization and efforts to suppress negative information about the president.

It is unclear whether the FBI has scrutinized Davidson.

The deal involving Broidy was not known to be a subject of the investigation.

In his statement, Broidy apologized to his wife and family while acknowledging that he had had an affair with the woman. He said that “she alone decided that she did not want to continue with the pregnancy and I offered to help her financially during this difficult period.”

He lamented that the issue had become a national news story, and blamed it for the investigations into Cohen. He said that “Mr. Cohen reached out to me after being contacted by this woman’s attorney, Keith Davidson,” and that he hired Cohen after Cohen “informed me about his prior relationship with Mr. Davidson.”

In fact, the contract used in Broidy’s case included the same aliases that were used in the 2016 contract relating to Trump and Clifford — David Dennison and Peggy Peterson — according to a person familiar with it.

A spokesman for Davidson said he could not confirm or deny the details of the agreement. In a statement, Davidson said, “I’ve always acted in my client’s best interest, and appropriately in all matters.”

Davidson’s relationship with Cohen forms part of the basis for a lawsuit brought by McDougal. She is seeking to get out of her contract with AMI, the owner of The National Enquirer, which never ran her story after it bought it in August 2016.

In the lawsuit, she contends that Cohen played a secret role in the negotiations for that deal, which allegedly involved only herself and the tabloid media company. The Times reported earlier this year that Cohen and Davidson discussed the deal the day before McDougal signed the contract.

Broidy was a major fundraiser for George W. Bush, but he is particularly connected in Trump’s orbit.

He got his start in business as an accountant and then as an investment manager for Glen Bell, the founder of Taco Bell. He was a vice chairman of Trump’s inaugural committee, has met frequently with top White House officials and had an Oval Office meeting with the president in October, according to documents obtained by The Times.

During the wide-ranging October meeting, Broidy raised numerous topics high on the agenda of the United Arab Emirates, a country that has given his security company a contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars. He pitched the president on a paramilitary force his company was developing for the UAE and urged Trump to fire Rex Tillerson, then the secretary of state, whom the UAE believed was insufficiently tough on its rival Qatar.

The documents show that Broidy has worked closely with George Nader, an adviser to the UAE and a witness in the special counsel’s investigation, to help steer Trump administration policy on numerous issues in the Middle East. Robert Mueller, the special counsel, is examining Nader’s possible role in funneling Emirati money to finance Trump’s political efforts. There is no indication that Mueller’s team is looking into Broidy.

In 2009, Broidy pleaded guilty to charges that he made nearly $1 million worth of illegal gifts to New York state officials to win an investment of $250 million from the state’s public pension fund. Among the gifts were trips to Israel and Italy, payouts to girlfriends and relatives of officials and an investment in one relative’s production of a low-budget movie called “Chooch.” </s> Stormy Daniels, the porn star whom Donald Trump’s attorney acknowledges paying $130,000 just before Election Day, believes she is now free to discuss an alleged sexual encounter with the man who is now president.

NEW YORK — Stormy Daniels, the porn star whom Donald Trump’s attorney acknowledges paying $130,000 just before Election Day, believes she is now free to discuss an alleged sexual encounter with the man who is now president, her manager told The Associated Press.

At the same time, developments in the bizarre case fueled questions about whether such a payment could violate federal campaign finance laws.

Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, believes that Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, invalidated a non-disclosure agreement after two news stories were published Tuesday: one in which Cohen told The New York Times he made the six-figure payment with his personal funds, and another in the Daily Beast, which reported that Cohen was shopping a book proposal that would touch on Daniels’ story, said the manager, Gina Rodriguez.

“Everything is off now, and Stormy is going to tell her story,” Rodriguez said Wednesday.

At issue is what, exactly, happened inside a Lake Tahoe, Nevada, hotel room in 2006 between Trump, then a reality TV star, and Clifford, who was promoting a porn production company during a celebrity golf tournament.

In the years since, Clifford has claimed that she and Trump had sex once and then carried on a subsequent yearslong platonic relationship. But she has also, through a lawyer, denied the two had an affair. Trump’s lawyer, Cohen, has denied there was ever an affair.

The actress first detailed her account of an alleged extramarital affair with Trump in 2011, when the celebrity website The Dirty published it but then removed the material under the threat of a lawsuit, according to the site’s founder, Nik Richie.

Her story then remained largely out of public view until a month before the 2016 presidential election, when the website The Smoking Gun published an account that went mostly unnoted by major news organizations.

In January, The Wall Street Journal reported that a limited liability company in Delaware formed by Cohen made the six-figure payment to the actress to keep her from discussing the affair during the presidential campaign.

Cohen said the payment was made with his own money, and that “neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Ms. Clifford, and neither reimbursed me for the payment, either directly or indirectly.”

He was responding to inquiries from the Federal Election Commission, which is investigating an advocacy group’s complaint that the October 2016 transaction violated campaign finance laws.

The case was reminiscent of the 2012 prosecution of former Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards, who faced six criminal charges after a pair of his wealthy friends spent nearly $1 million to support his pregnant mistress, Rielle Hunter, during his 2008 presidential run.

Jurors eventually acquitted Edwards on one charge of accepting illegal campaign contributions, but were unable to reach a verdict on the five remaining counts including conspiracy and making false statements. The case ended when prosecutors elected not to retry Edwards.

As in that case, the payment by Trump’s lawyer was not reported as a campaign expenditure nor an in-kind contribution, and the origin of the money is still unclear, said Paul Ryan, a vice president at Common Cause, the group that filed the complaint.

But Bradley Smith, the Republican chairman of the Federal Election Commission from 2000 to 2005, was skeptical that the payment by Cohen could pose a campaign finance issue.

“You’d have to prove that it was a coordinated expenditure, and that the reason it was done was for the benefit of the campaign,” he said. If the payment was made to protect Trump’s brand or avoid personal embarrassment, he said, that would likely not be a campaign problem.

At the time of the payment, which followed the release of footage from “Access Hollywood,” in which Trump was recorded bragging about grabbing women’s privates, Clifford was negotiating with multiple national news networks about telling her story.

A White House spokeswoman referred all questions about the payment to Cohen.

The alleged affair between the actress and Trump occurred in 2006, a year after his marriage to his third wife, Melania.

A lawyer for Clifford, Keith Davidson, has previously distributed statements on her behalf denying there was any affair.

But in a 2011 interview with the gossip magazine In Touch Weekly, the actress — who the magazine said passed a polygraph exam — said the two had sex on one occasion and she described subsequent in-person meetings, phone calls and discussions about a potential TV appearance. The AP has previously reported that In Touch held off on publishing her account after Cohen threatened to sue the publication. It published the interview last month.

In recent weeks the actress has played coy, declining to elaborate when pressed on ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”

Rodriguez said her client will soon announce how and when she will tell her story publicly. The celebrity website The Blast first reported the contention that Cohen’s comments freed Clifford from her nondisclosure agreement. </s> President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer negotiated a deal in late 2017 to pay $1.6 million to a former Playboy model who said she was impregnated by a top Republican fundraiser, according to people familiar with the matter.

Michael Cohen, whose office, home and hotel room were raided by federal agents this week, arranged the payments to the woman on behalf of Elliott Broidy, a deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee with ties to Mr. Trump, the people familiar with the matter said. Mr. Broidy, a Los Angeles-based... </s> Michael Cohen leaves a federal courthouse in New York City, on May 30, 2018.

Donald Trump's former personal lawyer and "fixer" Michael Cohen, has pleaded guilty to charges including campaign finance fraud stemming from hush money payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels and ex-Playboy model Karen McDougal.

The 51-year-old Cohen entered the plea in federal court in New York on Tuesday. The other charges involve bank fraud and income tax evasion.

As part of his plea agreement, Cohen agreed not to challenge any sentence from 46 to 63 months.

Cohen's plea follows months of scrutiny from federal investigations and a falling out with the president, whom he previously said he'd "take a bullet" for.

FBI raids in April sought bank records, communications with Trump's campaign and information on payments to Daniels and McDougal.

Both women claimed Trump had affairs with them, which he denies.

The deal comes after reports that federal investigators were looking into whether Cohen committed bank and tax fraud worth more than $20 million, according to a media report. The New York Times, citing anonymous sources, said authorities were focusing on loans obtained for taxi businesses owned by Cohen and his family.

Investigators were also considering whether Cohen had violated campaign finance and other laws when he made financial arrangements to pay women to stay silent about alleged affairs with then-candidate Trump back in 2016.

Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, was paid $130,000 by Cohen. She has since filed a civil lawsuit to be released from a "hush" agreement over her affair.

Daniels' attorney, Michael Avenatti, said Tuesday's developments "will permit us to have the stay lifted in the civil case & should also permit us to proceed with an expedited deposition of Trump under oath about what he knew, when he knew it, and what he did about it."

Avenatti also seemed to taunt Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani.

"Buckle Up Buttercup," he wrote. "You and your client completely misplayed this.."

Cohen was also involved in an agreement to pay McDougal to remain quiet about her own affair with Trump. Last month, an audio recording of a conversation reportedly betweenTrump andCohen, about a payment to a former Playboy model was released.

Prosecutors had reportedly considered filing charges against Cohen by the end of August.

Cohen, who long served as Trump's fixer, has been under investigation for months. In April, federal investigators for the Southern District of New York seized roughly 4 million files from Cohen's home, business office and hotel room.

The investigation has strained the once close relationship between Trump and Cohen.

More: Report: Ex-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen investigated for bank and tax fraud of more than $20 million

More: Feds win access to records seized from ex-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen

More: Michael Cohen tapes: Here's what we know about the secret recordings
The National Enquirer reportedly paid former Playboy model Karen McDougal US$150,000 for a story about an alleged affair she had with Donald Trump in 2006. The tabloid however suppressed the story.