Today, Explained - Lady and the Trump

Episode Date: March 16, 2018

A president. A porn star. A lawyer with a $130,000 payoff. The allegation is Donald Trump had an affair with Stormy Daniels and his lawyer paid her to keep quiet. Now, she’s suing so she can talk freely and just today, Daniels' attorney says someone threatened to physically harm her. Vox's Laura McGann says this is much more than your run-of-the-mill political sex scandal. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Luke Vander Ploeg, Today Explained producer. We have been in this mattress firm in Brentwood, Washington, D.C. for four days. But today, my friend, is the day we figure out which mattress speaks most to you. I'm ready to go. Let's do it. Mattressfirm.com slash podcast to learn how you can improve your sleep. I'm Laura McGann, and I run politics and policy coverage here. At the Vox. At The Vox.

At TheVox.com. Okay, so you definitely know who Stormy Daniels is. Oh, I know who Stormy Daniels is. So, Stormy Daniels is an adult film star. Her real name is Stephanie Clifford, but her chosen performance name and sort of personal chosen name is Stormy Daniels. She says that she had an affair with Donald Trump for a year. The legal battle between the president and a former adult film star escalated today.

She has filed a lawsuit seeking permission to talk about an alleged affair with Mr. Trump. His legal team denies the affair and says she needs to follow a non-disclosure agreement. I know you either do or don't have a non-disclosure agreement, which, if you didn't have a non-disclosure agreement, do you have a non-disclosure agreement? Do I? I didn't know you could, like, have an affair with someone and then have an NDA,

but that's a thing you could do, I learned from this story. Apparently. You can, like, cheat on your wife and then have an NDA. And then say this thing you could do, I learned from this story. Apparently. You can like cheat on your wife and then have an NDA. And then say this never happened because of the law. Yeah. So this is what's going on right now with Donald Trump. His lawyer, actually, and his other lawyer have set up a sort of deal with Stormy where she's not allowed to talk about this affair that she had with Donald Trump. They paid her $130,000 to just not say anything.

So she signed this document and now she wants to talk. Why does this back and forth matter? Who signed it and who didn't? The coverage of this story has been very focused on this as a sex scandal. Yeah. And it definitely is. But it's a story about campaign finance. It's a story about corruption.

And it's a story about how our politics are changing under Donald Trump. Yes, the main character is an adult film actress, but it's bigger than that. Okay. I want to convince you. I'm going to. What is the love story of Donald and Stormy? How does it start? Okay, so let's go back in time.

We are in 2006. We are going to go to a B-list celebrity golf tournament in Nevada. This is where Stormy and the Dons see each other. And they have, well, she puts it as their first sexual encounter. I would go with tryst maybe, but she says it goes on for a year. Meanwhile, back at home in Trump Tower, Melania has just given birth to Barron. And so she's at home taking care of Barron. And Donald Trump is, you know, out there at golf tournaments. He denies that any of this happened. But, you know, there's quite a bit of evidence to

suggest that maybe Donald Trump isn't being totally honest. Like what? What are the receipts here? What do we got? She gave some interviews during the 2016 campaign to a couple of media outlets. So this is right after there's an Access Hollywood tape renowned now for Donald Trump saying, you know, that he likes to grab women by their privates. And she sees this and decides, you know what, I've been quiet about this affair for a decade, but I want to say something. So she goes to various media outlets, but Stormy, being the entrepreneur that she is, she's not just going to give her story away for free. I mean, that's crazy in her mind. So she wants to be paid. So outlets like Slate said, no, we don't we don't pay for stories.

She then ends up talking to Trump World about signing this nondisclosure agreement and getting paid one hundred and thirty thousand dollars. She surely doesn't meet with with the president himself. Here's how it goes down. She hires a lawyer. Her lawyer works with Donald Trump's lawyer. His name is Michael Cohen. He crafts this nondisclosure agreement saying, you know, you can't, no releasing social media, no releasing photos, videos, whatever you got, you would be totally quiet. And in exchange, I will send you $130,000. Okay. They email back

and forth. He's using his Trump account, his Trump organization account. He was also working for the campaign at the same time. He then sends over $130,000 wired from his own bank account. And this is all documented. There's proof of it. He admits to all this. He said, yes, this is what I did. This is important to keep in mind. He made a mistake, he says. He crafted the NDA, Stormy Daniels signs it. Okay. But Donald Trump never signed the agreement. Instead, they just initialed it with the name of an LLC that is sort of a go-between between the Trump organization and sort of other entities.

So he never signs it. It's just this sort of shady initialing. And is that an innocent mistake or a purpose? We don't know. We don't know, but definitely, I mean, functionally, it's dumb. Like generally what you do, like if you and I were to make an agreement, if I sign it, you sign it. Sure.

Because the agreement is she won't say anything and Donald Trump won't say anything. Right. So that brings us now to the present. This winter, she started kind of trotting around to other media organizations again. Trump world catches wind of this, that she's making moves. Another lawyer for the Trump organization reaches out to her lawyer and says, hey, you've got this NDA. We're going to arbitration and a judge is going to tell you you can't say anything and I'm going to get a restraining order. She and her lawyer sue to get this restraining order lifted because Donald Trump never signed the agreement. So they're saying it's void. Cohen and the second lawyer are both saying, no, no, it wasn't the company.

It was just us just doing legal stuff for the hell of it. Which is hard to believe. I mean, I just can't, you know, even if I'm trying to be as generous as possible, like that's just ridiculous. These aren't the kinds of lawyers that are doing a lot of pro bono work. Why would you? Why would you say, you know, I will pro bono get a restraining order for this adult actress

who says that you had an affair. So she shops a story around pre-election. Yes. She signs the NDA eventually. Then this becomes a story late last year. Before she had signed an NDA, she was free to talk to people over the summer whenever she wanted. So in that window of Access Hollywood to when she signed the NDA just days before the election, she was free to talk to whoever. So then she's asked about it after the election, after she's taken the hundred and thirty grand and cashed it.

She says, yeah, that never happened. Right. Because she's got this NDA. And she now has had a change of heart and is saying, look, I signed this thing. I took the hush money. But you know what? Donald Trump never signed it. I wish I hadn't.

I will give the money back. You know, the affair is real. While these legal proceedings are playing out, a totally separate legal proceeding is underway, pretty much disconnected from this, but is becoming important. So BuzzFeed News, about a year ago, they published what is now known as the P-Tape dossier, if you recall. The Steele dossier, if you recall. The Steele dossier. Allegations that Russian operatives claim to have compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump. And part of it is, you know, that there is possible evidence that could be used against Trump in a blackmail capacity of him engaged in some type of sexual and urination thing. So BuzzFeed was the first to decide, you know what, we're going to publish it. Even though we can't verify these claims, we think it's newsworthy because people are

talking about it on Capitol Hill. OK. So they publish it. Donald Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen, says to BuzzFeed, you'll see me in court. As he does. As he does. So he sues BuzzFeed on behalf of Donald Trump for defamation. Now, BuzzFeed's lawyer, in a total power move, says, OK, well, I want Stormy Daniels to keep all of her records because that case relates to a pattern of behavior we're

seeing in this case. That's some like Taekwondo stuff. It's badass. I mean, they're just like, come at us. Yeah, we're going to get Stormy in here and maybe she signed an NDA. But if in the context of a lawsuit, an NDA is meaningless. In the context of a lawsuit, an NDA is meaningless. In the context of a lawsuit, an NDA is meaningless? In this context, the lawyers who have seen the NDA and sort of commented on this in the press are saying if it was decided the defense wanted to depose her as part of the case, it would be very unlikely that this NDA would prevent that. So what might she say if she decides to speak to BuzzFeed or decides to speak to some other outlet that maybe pays her? what is she going to say?

We know that she's saying she had an affair for a year. We know that. But inside of the NDA, it has this clause about how she can't share any electronic messages that were exchanged on. And really specific. So nothing from Instagram, for example. No images. No videos. And she has said she has stuff.

Stuff? We don't know what the stuff is. She's saying images of some kind. Oh, dear. Yeah, but we don't know. That, to me, is a tip-off of they think she might have some type of evidence, and they don't want it out there. All right, so you've got your NDAs, your lawsuits,

your stash of photos. It sounds like a classic sex scandal, but Laura McGann says this Stormy Daniels situation could be like the Mount Kilimanjaro of political sex scandals. That's after the break. This is Today Explained. Okay, Luke, you've tried the softs, you've tried the firms. There's only one thing left.

That's medium. Let's do it. What's your approach here? Are you going to jump on like you did the soft? Are you going to ease yourself down like you did the firm? I'm gonna do a nice little sit and spin. Okay. Oh, yeah. How do you feel?

You know, this is, I think this is just right. I'm sinking in a little bit, it's cradling me, but at the same time, I've got some back support. Feels pretty good. Okay, before you make a decision, I just wanna remind you that Matches Firm offers 120 night sleep trial to ensure perfection and 120-night low-price guarantee so you know you paid the perfect price.

Mattressfirm.com slash podcast. Moment of truth. Drumroll. I say medium. You're a medium guy. I'm a medium guy. Do you feel like you're just,'re just not committing to either extreme here? No, I feel like sometimes something's just right.

You feel good? I feel great. Thanks, Mattress Firm. I'm Sean Ramos from This Is Today Explained, and I'm speaking with Laura McGann. She runs politics coverage here at Vox. When you talk about photos and potentially embarrassing the president, I wonder if for some it starts to feel like this is kind of blackmail and not an important political story or something.

Does that come up in this conversation, in this huge scandal? On the one hand, it's like, Stormy, is this revenge porn? Right. I mean, this is where I kind of like to pause with people and say, OK, yes, this might be a sex scandal that involves revenge porn and the president of the United States. But don't think of it that way. OK. What you want to think about is people close to Donald Trump and presumably Donald Trump,

though his lawyers have done a good job of shielding him, believe that someone has such embarrassing information about Donald Trump that they are willing to pay six figures to make sure that that secret doesn't get out. We know that the Trump organization has aggressively used NDAs for years. We know that Donald Trump never released his tax returns. We know that Donald Trump has said he doesn't have relationships with certain people. And then it turns out he did. We know so little about him because the basic stuff is hidden. Oh, and of course, I can't believe I didn't start with this.

There are 19 women who say he either sexually assaulted them or committed some other type of misdeed towards them. And that's 19 women on the record. So here is a person who is so secretive and has a bad track record with women and is sort of shady and has connections all over the world and we don't know what they are and a history of NDAs. When you take that all together, it opens us up to just the threat of corruption. I mean, we're seeing Donald Trump profit off the presidency again and again and again. He's completely comfortable with other forms of corruption, you know, whether it's owning a hotel across the street from the White House where the Republican National Committee holds events and

literally pays him. You know, he's a guy who's very, very comfortable with compromising the office of the presidency. He's got at least one person who's basically blackmailing him. We've got 19 other angry women. Who else is there? And how much pressure is he under? We just don't know. It's not really about whether or not he slept with this woman. I mean, that's not exactly news.

I mean, Donald Trump, he was having an affair with his second wife while he was still married to his first wife. Like, there's no like, oh, I'm grabbing my pearls. Donald Trump had an affair. Like, that's just not that's not news. This is also, drum roll please, a campaign finance issue. Wait, really? Yes. Stay with me on this.

So, American campaign finance law is just, you know, an empty husk at this point. Yeah. Except for one, you know, one little thing, which is in the United States, a corporation cannot make a donation directly to a candidate's campaign. This is why we have PACs? Right. I mean, you know, there are ways to get around it. You can give to a super PAC. Yeah. Companies can make these donations, but you cannot give straight to a candidate.

And there's other ways for corporations to get around these various ways of having influence. What basically happened is when Michael Cohen wired $130,000 to Stormy Daniels as a lawyer for the Trump organization, he essentially was giving a gift to the campaign because he was saying, you are going to screw up this campaign. Oh. Because he was saying, you are going to screw up this campaign. It's days away from the election. I'm going to pay you as a corporation to protect Donald Trump. And that might be illegal.

Yes. There's also then the question of, well, what if Cohen did this as just a private individual? OK. And this is sort of what he's saying is, you know, the both of Trump's lawyers are saying, well, this is what they want to argue is that this was not a corporation getting involved in a campaign. This is really at the heart of it as well.

Is Donald Trump allowing his lawyers to commit crimes on his behalf to protect him or maybe even encouraging it. I can see this hurting Donald Trump's attorney, Michael Cohen. I can see this hurting Stormy Daniels. I don't know if anything hurts this president. Will he be affected by any of this? I would say in this case, the thing that makes me think maybe it would hurt him, and this is really my underlying kind of thinking on why this is the little scandal that could, is that it's playing out in court. A lot of times he just says, I'm not showing you my tax returns. And then he just denies, you know, anything.

But there's no way to prove it because all of the information is kept secret. In this case, these things are playing out in a public way. You've got the arbitration. So that that's Stormy versus Michael Cohen, essentially. This is Stormy versus the Trump, the Trump organization, essentially. Then there's the lawsuit in Los Angeles where she is basically suing to get out of the arbitration. There's also the BuzzFeed case

where they are defending themselves against a defamation case. So that's it. Lauren McGann, you convinced me that this story is worth talking about and covering on our podcast. Yes. and covering on our podcast. Yes! Alright Luke, I think it's time we leave this fine store. Yeah, I had a great time.

Me too. We tried a lot of mattresses. We did. We did. You're kind of an expert now. I feel like I am. There are also experts here at Mattress Firm. You can find out more at mattressfirm.com slash podcast. Before we go, we should acknowledge this section of the store over here. Oh, yeah, the pillows.

Accessories, bruh. That too. You're covered. I am. Literally and figuratively.