Insiders thought Access Hollywood tape would be beginning of the end for Trump, trial hears
While Donald Trump’s campaign was spiralling after a leaked tape caught him bragging about sexually assaulting women, an attorney and tabloid editor brokering deals to keep damaging stories about him out of the press thought his chances of winning the 2016 presidential election were over, his hush money trial heard on Tuesday.
Keith Davidson – a former attorney for adult film star Stormy Daniels who ultimately negotiated the $130,000 sale of her story to Mr Trump’s then-attorney Michael Cohen – testified that interest in his client’s story “reached a crescendo” after the 2005 Access Hollywood tape leaked just weeks before Election Day in 2016.
That deal is at the heart of the hush money case against the former president, who is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records in an alleged effort to cover up his reimbursements to Cohen as “legal expenses.”
Mr Davidson spent the morning testifying about a separate scheme involving a different client, former Playboy model Karen McDougal, whose story of an alleged affair with Mr Trump was buried by the publisher of the National Enquirer for $150,000.
Then the Access Hollywood tape happened.
Manhattan prosecutors have built their case on the story of a candidate who was desperate to keep his election chances afloat while his campaign was in “damage control mode” after the tape’s release.
Mr Davidson discussed the tape with then-National Enquirer editor Dylan Howard, who fed potentially damaging allegations about Mr Trump to his publisher David Pecker as part of a secret “catch and kill” scheme to purchase the rights to those stories without any intention of publishing them.
“Trump is f*****,” Mr Davidson wrote to Mr Howard, according to messages shown in court on Tuesday.
“Wave the white flag. It’s over people!” Mr Howard replied.
Prior allegations about Ms Daniels were already on a gossip website, but in the wake of the Access Hollywood scandal, “it could get a lot worse” if she resurrected them, Mr Davidson testified.
That tape captured Mr Trump saying that he “moved” on a female TV personality “like a b****”.
He can be heard saying on the tape: “I’m automatically attracted to beautiful – I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the p****. You can do anything.”
Ms Daniels’s manager “went directly” to Mr Howard to negotiate a deal for her story, according to Mr Davidson. “I had nothing to do with that,” he said.
Last week, Mr Pecker testified that he wanted nothing to do with the story, fearing that any connections between American Media Inc and an adult film star could threaten his distribution at major retailers like Walmart.
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