Donald Trump Sparked Affair Rumors With A Playboy Model Before Stormy Daniels

When the indictment against former president Donald Trump was unsealed, it became clear that the Manhattan District Attorney's office hadn't just been investigating a hush money payment to Stormy Daniels, the adult film star who told InTouch that she had sex with Trump and watched "Shark Week" programming with him. Per CNBC, former Playboy model Karen McDougal is also referenced in the legal document.

Trump was charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. He pleaded not guilty to all counts during his arraignment on April 4. Among the allegations against him was a claim that he had an extramarital affair with McDougal, who reportedly received her own payment of $150,000. But whereas Trump's former attorney, Michael Cohen, paid Daniels, McDougal's money came from The National Enquirer's publishing company, AMI. In 2018, the publisher confessed to participating in what is known as a "catch and kill" scheme, paying for the exclusive rights to McDougal's story in order to sweep it under the rug, per The Guardian. The company's CEO, David Pecker, was reportedly chummy with Trump and was trying to help him "kill" any potentially damaging stories ahead of the 2016 presidential election. Prosecutors argued that AMI's payment to McDougal was essentially an off-the-books, illegal campaign donation to Trump.

But McDougal eventually told her story, and she claimed that she didn't just have sex with Trump on multiple occasions — she fell in love with him.

In 2018, Karen McDougal spoke about her reported affair with Donald Trump on "Anderson Cooper 360." She recalled meeting Trump in 2006 at the Playboy Mansion when he was filming an episode of "The Celebrity Apprentice" there. After getting McDougal's number, Trump later invited her to dine with him at the Beverly Hills Hotel. McDougal was initially surprised that Trump's bodyguard escorted her to his hotel room after picking her up. She had believed that their dinner date would take place in the hotel's restaurant, not in that intimate setting. "We talked for a couple hours — then, it was 'ON!' We got naked + had sex," McDougal recalls in notes obtained by The New Yorker. But that first night ended in tears for McDougal after Trump offered her a post-coital payment, a gesture she found hurtful.

Still, there was something about Trump's personality and appearance that McDougal found appealing. "I liked his charisma," she revealed. "He's got great posture." McDougal estimated that she and Trump met up around half a dozen times a month over the course of their 10-month relationship. She confessed to falling in love with Trump, claiming that he told her he felt the same way. "There was a real relationship there," she said. According to McDougal, their affair got so serious that Trump told her he had purchased an apartment for her as a Christmas present. But she ended their affair before she ever visited it.

Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels' stories about their alleged affairs with Donald Trump converge at a 2006 celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe. Daniels claimed that she had a single sexual encounter with Trump there, and she later learned that McDougal was with him at the event. In her memoir "Full Disclosure," Daniels shares her reaction to hearing McDougal's story. "Welcome to the s***ty club, sister," she writes. "Her description of their 'dates' sounds a lot like mine ... Except the poor thing had sex with him multiple times."

During her "Anderson Cooper 360" interview, McDougal said that she was surprised to learn about Trump's alleged hotel date with Daniels because she and "The Apprentice" star were pretty much inseparable during the golf tournament. "I can't imagine when he found the time, except for maybe the day I left," she said. McDougal also told Anderson Cooper that she had no idea that Trump was seeing anyone else (besides his wife Melania Trump, obvs) during their 10 months together.

Ultimately, the guilt of having an affair with a married man became unbearable for McDougal, and she decided to pull the plug on her relationship with Trump. But, like so many people in the ex-president's orbit, she displayed a degree of loyalty to him. While defending her decision to speak to AMI about their affair, she told Cooper, "I voted for Donald. Why would I want to damage him? ... That's my president."