McDougal, who says she had an affair with Trump more than a decade ago, alleges in the lawsuit that American Media Inc. did not act alone when it bought her silence in 2016 but “worked secretly with Mr. Trump's personal 'fixer.' ”
The “fixer,” according to the lawsuit, is attorney Michael Cohen, the same lawyer who claims to have used his own funds to pay off porn star Stormy Daniels, who also says she had an affair with Trump.
The White House has declined to say whether Trump knew about Cohen's $130,000 arrangement with Daniels, though the notion that Trump would have been unaware strains credulity. It seemed more plausible that Trump would not have known about the $150,000 deal between McDougal and American Media, but now the charge that Cohen was involved in that nondisclosure agreement, too, makes it even harder to imagine that the president had no idea what was being done on his behalf.
The buffer between Trump and the efforts to muzzle the women he had alleged affairs with appears to be shrinking. Trump denies both relationships.