The Daily - Friday, Mar. 9, 2018

Episode Date: March 9, 2018

Hush money. Catch-and-kill deals. The threat of blackmail. An elaborate system has developed to silence women who level accusations against powerful men. One of those women is Stephanie Clifford, a pornographic actress who claims to have had an affair with Donald J. Trump. Guest: Jim Rutenberg, The New York Times’s media columnist. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, hush money, catch-and-kill deals, the threat of blackmail, an elaborate system has developed to silence women who level accusations against powerful men. Women who level accusations against powerful men.

It's Friday, March 9th. Jim, say I'm a powerful man and I have an affair with a woman. I think she might take this affair public and I really don't want that to happen. In fact, I am determined to avoid that happening. What are my options? Well, it does depend to some extent how wealthy you are, how powerful you are, and who your friends are, but let me get to that. Jim Rutenberg covers the media for The Times.

So your most common route, sadly, is a payoff, hush money, usually done in the form of a nondisclosure agreement. You don't talk about this, I will pay you a great sum of money. What if the woman does not agree to this hush money, to this nondisclosure agreement? Well, do you have a lot of disposable money? Then maybe you'd hire a private investigator, and they will dig up dirt on the accuser and then give you a file, a dirt file,

and maybe you'll present it to her and say, do you really want to go forward with making this public because I can make this really difficult for you? So this is basically a blackmail effort. Yeah, you could call it that. And what if that threat doesn't work? That's where it helps to have a friend like David Pecker, owner of the National Enquirer. And what he'll do is he will have his reporters get her story, convince her to sell it to them in an agreement in which they own the rights to her story forevermore.

And then they will put it in a file and lock it away forever. then they will put it in a file and lock it away forever. So the story is being bought in such a way that it will never be run, but because of the nature of the deal that this woman might sign, it can never be discussed. The term in the industry, catch and kill. Explain the catch and the kill. You catch the story by sending your reporters out to snag it, and then you bury it.

You kill it. You kill it, but the woman you had an affair with has signed away all the story rights to your friend at the Enquirer. and then you bury it. You kill it. You kill it, but the woman you had an affair with has signed away all the story rights to your friend at the Enquirer. And Jim, hearing you describe these practices, we've seen these tactics being used not just to try to hide alleged affairs,

but also to cover up very serious claims of sexual assault, right? Yes. very serious claims of sexual assault, right? Yes. The recent avalanche of sexual harassment allegations has cast a spotlight on non-disclosure agreements. These are the contracts employers use to keep such matters private. Five women who accused O'Reilly of harassment

were given settlements totaling roughly $13 million on condition they would never talk. Finally, we return to the Harvey Weinstein story and new revelations about the great lengths he allegedly went to in order to quash stories, silence his accusers, and intimidate journalists. Harvey Weinstein is someone who the Inquirer would sometimes keep stories hidden about in order to take care of Harvey Weinstein. A former National Inquirer reporter says Cosby's lawyers squashed her story.

Cosby's lawyers talked the magazine into trading the story for an exclusive interview with Cosby. The question I have, Fred, is how many other times has the Enquirer done this? What if none of that works and this woman decides to tell her story? Well, then maybe you'll just slime them in the press. With Camille Cosby already stepping forward in defense of her husband, now their daughter, Evan Cosby, is attacking her father's accusers, writing on her Facebook page. There will always be jealous, vengeful, and crazy people out there to break anyone down.

Look, anything's possible, all right? But it goes to credibility, doesn't it? All right? If you look at this in totality, this was a hit job. The New York Post devoted its cover to smearing the actress I mentioned earlier. The media really played a role in serving as Harvey Weinstein's enforcer. This is an attempt to undermine the credibility, the reputation, the name of the woman that you've had an affair with

in order to make her account seem flimsy, less credible, not worth publishing. Yeah, and it certainly sends a message to other women, you should think about it. So, Jim, how does Donald Trump fit into all this? Well, he's the great, shiny example right now. There are two cases in particular that have come to light that show a mixture of the approaches. A report that Donald Trump had a year-long affair with the Playmate of the Year who was allegedly paid $150,000 in hush money by the National Enquirer. So the first case involves Karen McDougal, a Playboy model, celebrated centerfold. Here she is, the Playboy playmate who the Wall Street Journal claims Donald Trump had an affair with while he was married to Melania.

She meets Mr. Trump at a party at the Playboy mansion where The Apprentice is filming. You're going to meet, you have a personal friend of mine and a great guy. Then you're going to go to a swimming pool where you will be surrounded by some of the most beautiful women in the world. That's going to be a great treat. She's in her mid-thirties and as she writes about it

herself, she was quite taken with him. She says she had a nine-month-long affair with the president beginning in 2006. Flash forward to the campaign. McDougal posted this picture of herself with Trump on Twitter, the caption, Throwback Thursday in honor of the Republican debate. And she considers telling her story,

even tries to sell it to the Inquirer. What the Inquirer proceeds to do is swoop in to buy the rights to her story, and they offer her, as added incentive, a fitness column in their magazines and some cover exposure. So what does McDougal say to this offer? Well, she takes it.

It's $150,000. And she signs this deal, accepts the terms, and goes off quietly into the night. So then what's the second case, the other one? The other case involves a— Her name is Stormy, and that is very fitting because she is at the center of a political firestorm. A porn star best known as Stormy Daniels.

Her real name is Stephanie Clifford. And this is, I guess, a hybrid case for our test case purposes. Trump meets Stephanie Clifford at this celebrity golf tournament. According to Ms. Clifford, right after they meet, they start having an affair. Which supposedly happened in 2006, just four months after Melania gave birth to son Barron. She tells the story, which he denies. He offers her potential slot on The Apprentice. He dangles the idea of giving her an apartment.

But basically, she loses interest. The thing fades away. You don't hear about it for years. Fast forward to the campaign. Stormy Daniels realizes she has something that might be of value. She wants to sell her story about this alleged affair. Trump's campaign gets wind of it. And this time, it's not the National Enquirer that swoops in to buy her story to silence her.

It's Mr. Trump's own lawyer, Michael Cohen. And what does he do, this lawyer, Michael Cohen? Michael Cohen enters into negotiations with Ms. Clifford's lawyer, and they strike a deal in which she will stay silent about her story forever. She gives Donald Trump the rights to any text messages, photos, video, anything that relates to this affair. And that's supposed to silence it forever. Oh, boy, oh, boy. Money, power, politics. Amid all the chaos on Capitol Hill, you may have missed, isn't it amazing that you could have missed the revelations about a porn star named

Stormy Daniels, who allegedly, well, I can't even, I can't even get into this. Ms. Clifford's story comes roaring back right at the turn of the year. Like, happy new year, Mr. Trump. And what happens is that the Wall Street Journal breaks a story that Michael Cohen arranged to pay Ms. Clifford $130,000 through an LLC he sets up in Delaware. This nondescript office building in Delaware is the headquarters of a company

reportedly used to hide an alleged $130,000 payment from Donald Trump's lawyer to the porn star Stormy Daniels. Then the New York Times breaks a story saying Mr. Cohen now says he provided all of that money. It's from his own pocket. Cohen reportedly arranged the payment in October of 2016. He declined to say why he made the payment.

Cohen says that he wasn't reimbursed by the Trump organization or the Trump campaign. Ms. Clifford volleys back. Making that statement did probably invalidate an NDA that was keeping her silent. Saying, okay, Mr. Cohen, you were talking about this deal publicly. I also think I'm being impugned here, so I no longer respect this deal.

Mr. Cohen goes, we find out this week, goes and gets a temporary restraining order silencing her once again. And warning that she faces penalties if she publicly discusses a relationship with the president. But she comes back and files a formal lawsuit seeking to get out of her deal, and that's where we are right now.

That is a very, very messy situation for something that's supposed to be silent. Extra extraordinarily messy, and very, very, very public. I know you either do or don't have a nondisclosure agreement, which if you didn't have a nondisclosure agreement, do you have a nondisclosure agreement? Do I? You can't say whether you have a nondisclosure agreement, but if you didn't have a nondisclosure agreement, you most certainly could say, I don't have a nondisclosure agreement. Yes? You're so smart, Jimmy.

Thank you very much. Okay. Did Donald Trump know about this at the time, this offer? That's a key question. In a statement to NBC News, Cohen writing in part, neither the Trump organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Ms. Clifford. His lawyer, Mr. Cohen,

will not say exactly. Michael Cohen is one of the most loyal people there is, or at least has been, to Donald Trump. If you look at loyal in the Donald Trump dictionary, you will see Michael Cohen's face. The president's press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, will not

say exactly. Did the president and Michael Cohen talk about this payment at any time during the campaign or thereafter? Not that I'm aware of, and I'd refer you to Michael. And that will become a key point in a lawsuit that Ms. Clifford now has brought, trying to get herself out of this deal. Is it possible that this money that Cohen was paying Clifford was for something else? No one is trying to make that argument. Clifford was for something else? No one is trying to make that argument. Did the president approve of the payment that was made in October of 2016 by his longtime lawyer and advisor, Michael Cohen? Look, the president has addressed these directly and made very well

clear that none of these allegations are true. This case has already been won in arbitration, and anything beyond that, I would refer you to the president's outside counsel. On the one hand, the White House is saying fake news, there was no affair. The president has denied the allegations against him. But on the other hand, they're saying— And again, this case has already been won in arbitration. Anything beyond that, I would refer you to outside counsel. So the White House is acknowledging an agreement to keep her silent, but they are simultaneously somehow denying that there was ever an affair.

It's as simple as that. It doesn't feel like the efforts to silence these two women, Clifford and McDougal, worked. Because here we are talking about them and talking about their allegations of an affair with Donald Trump. So how is it that we know about both of these alleged affairs? I mean, to put it in crass sort of tactical terms, they weren't well done.

We wouldn't be talking about this if they were handled the way they're supposed to be handled. Because these happen all the time and we don't know about them or we learn about them only years later. And what's the best example of how poorly done this was? Well, right now, the legal dispute involving Ms. Clifford and Mr. Cohen, Trump's lawyer, involves how badly done her contract was. Her lawyer is alleging that Michael Cohen made a fundamental mistake in drafting this agreement with her. There are places for signatures for Ms. Clifford, Ms. Clifford's lawyer, Mr. Cohen, and Mr. Trump.

Mr. Trump does not sign the agreement. So her lawyer is saying that that means the agreement is null and void. That's interesting because on the one hand, Trump never signing it feels kind of better for him, for Trump, now that he's president of the United States, right? Because it suggests that he never felt sufficient guilt to sign this thing. On the other hand, I guess it means that the agreement is incomplete and she can talk about it. Right. Deduction would tell you that that might have been his intent in not signing it. But even lawyers who aren't sure of this legal argument still think it was dumb to leave this blank signature. Why even bring him into the deal then? From what you're saying, these efforts to get silence were kind of botched.

But I wonder if we also know about this because the person at the heart of it was elected president and you have all these reporters reporting on it. Well, that's part of it. But there's another thing that they botched. And that is that they were slow, Mr. Cohen was slow to pay Ms. Clifford in the fall of 2016. Okay. And so what she proceeds to do is engage in a new round of media talks. There's a story in the Wall Street Journal just days before the election that mentioned Ms. Clifford's case, and then it disappears for months. So basically nobody really remembers it or notices it.

No one remembers it until the Harvey Weinstein story. Women who say they were assaulted and harassed by President Donald Trump share their agony watching Harvey Weinstein being shunned by society, asking of the president, quote, why not him? And the Harvey Weinstein story, which brings this system, this systematic silencing of women back to the fore, kind of shakes the trees again for President Trump. It's like he's Teflon. Things that would make other people lose their job or lose their credibility. And he just continues forward. And it's, yeah, it's really upsetting.

And suddenly everyone's talking about this infrastructure of suppressing women's stories and everyone's interest in these two cases is renewed. Yes, and the Me Too moment had already raised the question of these NDAs, these nondisclosure agreements in general, which is a different systematic silencing of women, which everyone agrees now I think is not acceptable in most of those cases. Jim, is there anything illegal or inherently wrong with what the president and those around him did in these two cases to try to keep these women from talking? Well, I'd say in general, it's inherently wrong if the woman has walked into a deal that she feels

was unfair and that she was flimflammed and now she's silenced forever. Mm-hmm. If she's tricked. If she's tricked. There could be a very important legal issue in how Stephanie Clifford was paid. Was it possibly an illegal campaign contribution? So that's a big deal. And that rises to a whole other level of story for us.

How could a payment to Stephanie Clifford to keep her silent, how could that be a campaign contribution? Because if it was done with the sole intention of protecting Donald Trump, the candidate, from information that would damage him weeks out from an election, if not days out from an election, then how is that not a political contribution? from an election, then how is that not a political contribution? Some are arguing, and there's certainly some way to that. This will be debated and decided now in the coming months. How many men, and I may be asking you to estimate here, but you've been reporting on this for a while, how many men do we think get this level of systematic protection? We know Weinstein, for example. We know the president. Well, we're learning about cases all the time, aren't we? Ever since the Weinstein story broke of new instances of these cases. However, again, the most common way they're dealt with is through sort of general NDAs and not these extra catch and kill elements.

So what makes the Trump story so kind of sensational is those details. Think about it. Buying the silence of a porn star alleging an affair. Or in the case of Karen McDougal, having allies in the press from a tabloid whose job, whose main goal in life, its mission is to expose scandalous news about famous people, grabbing the story and burying it on behalf of someone who's very powerful. That is just a whole other level of sensational. Another way of asking this is, how many people does the head of the National Enquirer personally protect? How many friends of Pecker are out there, would you guess, from your reporting?

Well, we know it's more than two. I think it's a legitimate plural on the friends. But because of the Me Too movement and because of reporting like what you have done, Jim, over the last year and a half, we now know about these efforts and this kind of system that's designed to keep these women silent in the case of Trump, in the case of Weinstein, even in the case of Bill Cosby. So do you think that this system is starting to unravel? these women silent in the case of Trump, in the case of Weinstein, even in the case of Bill Cosby. So do you think that this system is starting to unravel? I think the system will never go away as long as there are powerful people with powerful connections willing to use their money this way. But I do think that it's eroding. I do think that

women will be way hipper to the idea that this could happen and they could find themselves in a deal that ultimately doesn't end up being in their best interest. I think the NDAs have taken on an appropriate stench that people are talking about. Things are changing, but I don't see it going away anytime soon. Thank you, Jim. Thank you. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. On Thursday night, in a surprise diplomatic gamble, President Trump accepted an invitation to meet with North Korea's dictator, Kim Jong-un. I explained to President Trump that his leadership and his maximum pressure policy, together with international solidarity, brought us to this juncture.

During an announcement in front of the White House, South Korea's national security advisor said that Trump would meet with Kim by May. It would be a historic encounter between two bitter adversaries. There has never been a face-to-face meeting or even a phone call between the leaders of the United States and North Korea.

The Republic of Korea, the United States, and our partners stand together in insisting that we not repeat the mistakes of the past and that the pressure will continue until North Korea matches its words with concrete actions. Thank you. Well, thank you very much, everybody. I'm honored to be here with our incredible steel and aluminum workers. And you are truly the backbone of America, you know that. President Trump has followed through with his threat to impose steep tariffs

on steel and aluminum, ignoring intense opposition from Republicans, business groups, and U.S. trading partners. Our factories were left to rot and to rust all over the place. Thriving communities turned into ghost towns. You guys know that, right? Not any longer. The workers who poured their souls into building this great nation were betrayed. But that betrayal is now over. In response to fierce lobbying, the president agreed to exempt both Canada and Mexico from

the tariffs and held out the possibility of excluding allies like Australia. Nevertheless, the Times reports that foreign leaders who would be impacted by the tariffs are still warning of a trade war with the U.S. The Daily is produced by Theo Balcom, Lindsay Garrison, Rachel Quester, Annie Brown, Andy Mills, Ike Srees-Kanaraja, Claire Tedeschetter, Paige Cowan, and Michael Simon-Johnson, with editing help from Larissa Anderson. Lisa Tobin is our executive producer. Samantha Hennig is our editorial director.

Our technical manager is Brad Fisher and our sound engineer is Peter Sale. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Lansford of Wonderling. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick and Michaela Bouchard. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you Monday. Hey, it's Michael again. Daily listeners are always asking us about the story behind our Thank you. Listen to the episode and read all about the way we approach sound at nytimes.com slash daily song. That's nytimes.com slash daily song.