Karen McDougal
In mid-2016, a Beverly Hills lawyer, Keith Davidson, represented Playboy Playmate, Karen McDougal, who had had a ten month affair with Trump in 2006, just after Melania Trump had given birth to Barron. Under the settlement Davidson reached on her behalf, McDougal sold the rights to her story to American Media Inc., the parent company of The National Enquirer, for $150,000. Davidson called Trump’s lawyer and “fixer”, Michael Cohen, to inform him of the settlement. Davidson said he informed Cohen of the deal as “a professional courtesy.” (Don’t ever forget: These guys are consummate professionals.)
Ms. McDougal thought The National Enquirer would publish her story, but instead the plan of the Enquirer’s owner, David Pecker, a close friend of Trump, was to do nothing with the story – a ploy known in the trade as “catch and kill.” Ms. McDougal abided by her agreement not to disclose her story until this year when the Stormy Daniels case took over cable news. (Under a recent settlement – reached after she got new counsel – The National Enquirer no longer has the rights to McDougal’s story.)
Stormy Daniels
In February of this year, adult film actress, Stormy Daniels, represented by Michael Avenatti, sued to invalidate a Nondisclosure Agreement (NDA) she had signed in October 2016. According to Daniels’ suit, in mid-October 2016 – just prior to the election, Michael Cohen had formed a Delaware limited liability corporation called Essential Consultants, LLC (“EC”) to “facilitate” a $130,000 payment to Ms. Daniels in return for her promise not to disclose anything about a one night stand she claims to have had with Donald Trump in 2006. (Trump denies the affair; no one – including Melania – believes him.)
According to Cohen, he acted without Trump’s knowledge and used a line of credit on his house to raise the $130,000. Trump never signed the agreement that purported to bind him and Ms. Daniels. Cohen claimed that he did this deal out of loyalty to Trump, who Cohen thought might be embarrassed by further discussion of this “affair”, even though years earlier Ms. Daniels had discussed the encounter in detail with a tabloid publication, which had published the account. Cohen’s lawyer and spokesman, David Schwartz, denied that Trump had ever reimbursed Cohen. (A lie, of course.)
Ms. Daniels was represented in this deal by – guess who? – Keith Davidson. To protect the privacy of Mr. Trump and Ms. Daniels, false names were used in the Nondisclosure Agreement – “David Dennison” for Trump and “Peggy Peterson” for Ms. Daniels. In April of this year, Trump claimed he was unaware of the agreement at the time and did not know the source of funds Mr. Cohen used to pay off Ms. Daniels. (Another lie; what a surprise.)
Rudy Giuliani
Earlier this month, after all of Trump’s lawyers other than Jay Sekulow, had either been fired or quit, Rudy Giuliani – formerly “America’s Mayor”, now America’s Joke – emerged from his crypt to serve as Trump’s new lawyer, with the avowed mission of “wrapping up” the Mueller Investigation. This involved Rudy appearing on a lot of TV shows and spouting nonsense that contradicted Trump, Cohen and occasionally Giuliani himself.
In his first appearance, on The Sean Hannity Show, Rudy seemed to be slightly drunk. He told Hannity that Essential Consultants was a fund for taking care of problems like the Stormy Daniels problem. He said Trump did reimburse Cohen for paying off Stormy Daniels, a fact that surprised Hannity (since Trump and Cohen had denied it.) Rudy said he figured it out when he saw that starting in 2017 Trump had paid $35,000 monthly “retainers” to Cohen. All told, these “retainers” exceeded $400,000.
That’s when the wily Giuliani had an “Aha!” moment and said to himself:
“I said, that’s how he’s repaying it! With a little profit and a little margin for paying taxes for Michael!”
According to Rudy:
“I don’t think the president realized he paid him [Cohen] back for that specific thing [the Stormy Daniels payoff] until we [his legal team] made him aware of the paperwork [a day or two before Rudy appeared on Hannity’s show].”
Rudy said that when he explained his amazing discovery to Trump, the president responded:
“Oh my goodness, I guess that’s what it was for.”
(Doesn’t that sound just like Trump?)
This is, of course, total bullshit. In the financial disclosure form Trump filed in June of 2017 – after he had begun paying Cohen $35,000 per month – he did not mention an obligation to Cohen. (Trump filed an amended form this week in which he declared that he did have a debt of between $100,000 and $250,000 to Cohen when the original form was filed.)
Rudy went on to tell Hannity that most lawyers who represent famous or wealthy clients have control of such slush funds and settle cases without bothering the clients and that he did so all the time:
“He [Trump] didn’t know about the specifics of it, as far as I know. But he did know the general arrangement, that Michael would take care of things like this, like I take care of things like this with my clients.”
This was, of course, more bullshit and Rudy’s nationally known law firm, Traurig, Green, immediately disavowed Rudy’s statements and fired him.
Recently, Rudy seems to have celebrated the one year anniversary of the Mueller Investigation with an “this-has-gone-on-too-long” offensive. Is this the plan he and Trump have concocted to lay the foundation for Trump’s firing of Rosenstein and/or Mueller? Or is it, as he said last night on FOX, to push for a written report and then “rip it apart, rip them apart.” It is looking more and more as if that is the plan: trash Mueller, trash the FBI, trash everyone in sight, and unleash Rudy and Kellyann Conway on the TV-viewing audience. (Polls already show that 65% of Republicans think the FBI is “trying to frame” Trump.) As Trump says: “We’ll see.” (Check out Rudy’s eyes the next time you see him on TV. Also check out the silent German film, “Nosferatu”.)
Shera Bechard and Elliott Broidy
Shera Bechard was also a Playboy Playmate. In fact, she was Hugh Hefner’s special girlfriend for a while. She looks remarkably like Stormy Daniels’ younger, better-looking sister. She, too, was represented by Keith Davidson, who contacted Michael Cohen to suggest that he contact Elliott Broidy, a grotesquely unattractive zillionaire who was the Deputy Finance Chairman of the Republican National Committee, and inform him that Ms. Bechard – supposedly Broidy’s longterm girlfriend – was pregnant, might get an abortion [she did], and wanted money in return for a Nondisclosure Agreement.
Cohen made the contact, was hired by Broidy, and proceeded to “negotiate” with Davidson for a $1.6 million payoff for Bechard, to be paid out in quarterly installments over a two year period. Under the NDA between Broidy and Bechard, the pseudonyms of “David Dennison” and “Peggy Peterson” were recycled. Weirdly, the Bechard NDA makes no mention of Bechard’s pregnancy or alleged paternity and, when contacted, Bechard declined to provide proof that she was pregnant with Broidy’s child.
It doesn’t sound like much of a negotiation: Broidy paid both Davidson’s fee ($200,000) and Cohen’s fee ($250,000), which was cycled through Essential Consultants. But, whatever. As I noted earlier, these guys are true professionals.
Broidy, who has had previous criminal problems, owns a private security company, Circinus, which provides services to the U.S. and other governments. The company has hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts with the U.A.E. Broidy funnelled his payments to Bechard through Real Estate Attorneys’ Group, a legal corporation apparently set up by Davidson.
This arrangement came to the public’s attention on April 13, 2018, when it was reported by the Wall Street Journal. Broidy immediately resigned from his position with the Republican National Committee and issued a statement that read in part:
“I acknowledge I had a consensual relationship with a Playboy Playmate. At the end of our relationship, this woman shared with me that she was 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.”
In fact, it appears more likely that Trump was the father of Bechard’s aborted child and that Broidy paid the $1.6 million and entered into the NDA to protect Trump in return for favorable government action on some huge business deals Broidy was seeking from Middle Eastern and Malaysian clients. Michael Avenatti recently dropped a tease that Broidy was not the father of Shera Bechard’s aborted child.
Trump has commented that “one of the things that has made life worth living was getting your friends’ wives into bed.” Bechard was Hugh Hefner’s girlfriend until 2015. Trump’s friendship with Hefner seems to have soured shortly afterwards. Tom Arnold, a frequent guest at the Playboy Mansion, said in 2017 that two of Trump’s recent girlfriends were Playmates. We report; you decide. In the course of deciding, you will want to google the image of Elliott Broidy and ask yourself whether it is more likely that he or Trump impregnated Shera Bechard.
It is extremely important to Trump that he keep his connection to Bechard hidden, because cracks might appear in his heretofore unshakable Evangelical base if they find out that he paid for an abortion.
Michael Avenatti
My new hero – smart as a whip with balls of titanium. Apparently others agree with me, since his ubiquitous presence on TV has prompted lots of potential informants to contact him. One such informant – an anonymous person in “law enforcement” – gave Avenatti access to information contained in some Suspicious Action Reports (SAR’s) filed by Cohen’s banks. Avenatti disclosed this information in an “Executive Summary”, which showed that several million dollars were funneled through Essential Consultants, including large sums from AT&T, Novartis, a Korean Airline, and Columbus Nova, the American investment arm of a Russian oligarch, Viktor Vekselberg. When confronted with Avenatti’s disclosure, the companies confirmed the payments and in two cases conceded that they were even larger than reported – $1.2 million from Novartis and $600,000 from AT&T.
These were corrupt payments, made to buy influence with Trump in the hopes of obtaining favorable treatment in business deals. The AT&T – Verizon merger was still in play when the payments were made. As for Novartis, Trump had promised during the campaign to bring down drug prices by allowing Medicare to negotiate lower prices from the drug companies (which is currently not permitted, courtesy of a provision included by Republicans in Bush’s prescription drugs for seniors law.) The drug plan Trump proposed earlier this week did not allow Medicare to use its leverage to negotiate lower drug prices, so perhaps Novartis got what it paid for. Investors seemed to think so: after Trump’s announcement of his phony “drug plan”, drug company stocks took off.
I am sure there is more to come. Trump and Cohen are dirty, dirty, dirty. Giuliani is a pre-senile bullshitter. That Davidson and Cohen had a cozy arrangement months prior to the creation of Essential Consultants, suggests to me that there are are other women who entered into NDAs in return for keeping secret their romantic entanglements with Trump. Michael Avenatti has said several such women have contacted him, that their claims are being investigated, and that at least two of them were paid by Cohen for NDA’s (more than he paid Stormy Daniels) and may come forward.
Avenatti has been masterful at keeping his appearances interesting. He always promises- and delivers – new information. He’s taken on the President of the United States and “America’s Mayor” and – so far- is kicking their asses.
And we know that Mueller and the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York know a lot more about all of this than we do. It is going to get beautifully ugly.
I'm Not Making This Up... 
In The Donald’s case a “slush fund” is a “SHUSH FUND”!