CAMPAIGN FINANCE/MICHAEL COHEN/TAXES/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/WOMEN: “The federal campaign finance and tax evasion case that is embroiling the White House began in the unlikeliest of places: the world of supermarket tabloids. It is populated by porn stars and Playboy models, shadowy ‘story brokers’ and the ultra rich and powerful, who can buy back their secrets on an underground exchange run by gossip scribes who set the rules, the prices and, frequently, the reputational toll. That world has now come to life on the stark pages of federal court documents that detail violations of campaign finance and tax laws, implicating President Trump and reprising Watergate-era talk of ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’ and possible impeachment. In laying out the charges to which Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s longtime lawyer, pleaded guilty on Tuesday, the documents filed in New York also entangle several unidentified people in Mr. Trump’s business and from his campaign. The anatomy of the crime the court papers describe — stemming from hush money payments to two women who claimed they had sexual encounters with Mr. Trump — has a reality-television twist that has come to typify the Trump presidency. One of the women, the pornographic film star Stephanie Clifford, known as Stormy Daniels, went public with her story earlier this year in a media blitz, and she was represented by a brash lawyer who says he now is considering running for president.”
–Jim Rutenberg and Rebecca R. Ruiz, “Anatomy of a Crime: Sex, Hush Money and a Trump Fixer’s Guilty Plea,” The New York Times online, August 22, 2018