MEDIA/MICHAEL COHEN/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/WOMEN: “On Wednesday [12-13-18], while the political world was focused on the news that former Trump lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen had been sentenced to three years in prison for a variety of crimes, something else of potentially huge import got somewhat glossed over: American Media Inc., the parent company of the National Enquirer, admitted it had helped facilitate a hush payment to former Playboy model Karen McDougal and agreed to cooperate with the ongoing investigation being run by the Southern District of New York. That is a VERY big deal for two major reasons. First, AMI admitted that, in coordination with Trump’s presidential campaign, it had paid McDougal $150,000 in the run-up to the election for the exclusive rights to her story that she had an affair with Donald Trump a decade earlier…So, AMI is acknowledging for the first time that not only did it make the payment to McDougal, which it has long lied about publicly, but it also did so in concert with Trump’s campaign. The AMI settlement jibes with what we learned last week in the SDNY sentencing document on Cohen, in which the office makes clear they believe that Cohen made and sought to hide the payment to McDougal (as well as another six-figure payment to porn actress Stormy Daniels) at the direction and coordination of Trump.”
–Chris Cillizza, “Why the National Enquirer cooperation deal is a VERY big problem for Donald Trump,” CNN Politics, CNN.com, Decembr 13, 2018 12:33 am