ADVERTISEMENT

Ex-Playmate Says Donald Trump Offered to Pay Her After Sex

Ex-Playmate Says Donald Trump Offered to Pay Her After Sex

(Bloomberg) -- A former Playboy Playmate of the Year said Donald Trump offered to pay her after they had sex in a private bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel in 2006.

Karen McDougal said in an interview shown Thursday on CNN that she told Trump, "That’s not me, I’m not that kind of girl” when he offered her money. “He obviously assumed that’s the kind of girl I was,” McDougal said in the interview with Anderson Cooper. “Maybe because I was a Playmate, I don’t know.”

Michael Cohen, Trump’s personal lawyer, didn’t immediately respond to an emailed request for comment on the interview.

On Tuesday, McDougal sued American Media Inc., the publisher of the National Enquirer, to get out of a 2016 “catch-and-kill” deal in which the Enquirer paid $150,000 for her story without publishing it. She claims she was tricked into agreeing to the arrangement that requires her to keep silent about the alleged liaison.

McDougal claims she had a 10-month relationship with Trump starting in 2006, when he was already married to his third wife, Melania Trump, who had given birth to their son Barron earlier that year. Trump was the host of NBC reality show “The Apprentice” at the time.

Common Cause, a non-partisan watchdog group, filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission last month, claiming that AMI’s payment to McDougal violated the Federal Election Campaign Act. The $150,000 sum is described in the complaint as an undisclosed, illegal corporate contribution to the Trump campaign to influence the 2016 election.

To contact the reporter on this story: Edvard Pettersson in Los Angeles at epettersson@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Elizabeth Wollman at ewollman@bloomberg.net, Peter Blumberg

©2018 Bloomberg L.P.