The other woman who allegedly received payments in a plan to keep her story of an affair with Donald Trump squelched during his 2016 campaign is speaking out after the former president’s indictment.
Well, actually, Karen McDougal is just slyly shading Trump on social media.
On Wednesday, one day after Trump was indicted in New York City on 34 counts of falsifying business records, McDougal made a non-comment about the case on social media.
“I’ve been out and about enjoying Gods country ... I hope I didn’t miss anything,” she posted.
McDougal, a Playboy magazine Playmate of the Year in the late 1990s, has said she had an affair with Trump in 2006 and 2007, while he was married to Melania.
Although Trump has denied having a sexual relationship with her, she was paid $150,000 by American Media Inc. (AMI), then the corporate parent of the National Enquirer, for the exclusive rights to her story, which was then never published, in order to prevent her from speaking about it ahead of the 2016 election.
Prosecutors said Tuesday that Trump didn’t want McDougal’s story becoming public “because he was concerned about the effect it could have on his candidacy.”
So Trump, his then-lawyer Michael Cohen and his longtime friend, former AMI chief executive David Pecker, agreed that Trump would reimburse AMI for the payment made for her story.
Pecker later decided not to seek repayment after talking with a company lawyer, but the Federal Election Commission ruled in 2021 that the payment to McDougal amounted to an illegal campaign contribution and fined its successor company, A360 Media, $187,500, according to Reuters.