OT RNC Official Who Agreed to Pay Playboy Model $1.6 Million to have Abortion Resigns

A major donor with close ties to the White House resigned on Friday as deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee after the revelation that he had agreed to pay $1.6 million to a former Playboy model who became pregnant during an affair.

The deal was arranged by President Trump’s personal lawyer and fixer, Michael D. Cohen.

Under the terms of the deal, the Republican donor, Elliott Broidy, would pay the woman in installments over the course of two years, and in return, she would agree to stay silent about their relationship, two people with knowledge of the arrangement told The New York Times. The deal was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

The lawyer for the woman, Keith M. Davidson, also represented two women who were paid during the presidential campaign for their silence about alleged affairs with Mr. Trump — a former Playboy model, Karen McDougal, who sold the rights to her story to American Media Inc., and Stephanie Clifford, the pornographic actress known as Stormy Daniels, who received a payment of $130,000 that Mr. Cohen said came out of his own pocket.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation raided Mr. Cohen’s Manhattan office and hotel room on Monday seeking business records, emails and documents relating to those two agreements, as well as Mr. Cohen’s work for the Trump Organization and efforts to suppress negative information about the president.

It is unclear whether the F.B.I. has scrutinized Mr. Davidson.

The deal involving Mr. Broidy was not known to be a subject of the investigation.

In his statement, Mr. Broidy apologized to his wife and family while acknowledging that he had had an affair with the woman. He said that “she alone decided that she did not want to continue with the pregnancy and I offered to help her financially during this difficult period.”


He lamented that the issue had become a national news story, which he attributed to the publicity surrounding the federal investigations of Mr. Cohen. He said that the lawyer “reached out to me after being contacted by this woman’s attorney, Keith Davidson,” and that he hired Mr. Cohen after Mr. Cohen “informed me about his prior relationship with Mr. Davidson.”

In fact, the contract used in Mr. Broidy’s case included the same aliases that were used in the 2016 contract relating to Mr. Trump and Ms. Clifford — David Dennison and Peggy Peterson — according to a person familiar with it.

A spokesman for Mr. Davidson said he could not confirm or deny the details of the agreement. In a statement, Mr. Davidson said, “I’ve always acted in my client’s best interest, and appropriately in all matters.”

Mr. Cohen declined to comment.

Mr. Davidson’s relationship with Mr. Cohen forms part of the basis for a lawsuit brought by Ms. McDougal, who is seeking to get out of her contract with A.M.I., the owner of The National Enquirer, which never ran her story after buying it in August 2016.

In the lawsuit, she contends that Mr. Cohen played a secret role in the negotiations for that deal, which allegedly involved only herself and the tabloid media company. The Times reported earlier this year that Mr. Cohen and Mr. Davidson discussed the deal the day before Ms. McDougal signed the contract.

Mr. Broidy was a major fund-raiser for George W. Bush, but he is particularly connected in Mr. Trump’s orbit.

He got his start in business as an accountant and then as an investment manager for Glen Bell, the founder of Taco Bell. He was a vice chairman of Mr. Trump’s inaugural committee, has met frequently with top White House officials and had an Oval Office meeting with the president in October, according to documents obtained by The Times.

During the wide-ranging October meeting, Mr. Broidy raised numerous topics high on the agenda of the United Arab Emirates, a country that has given his security company a contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars. He pitched the president on a paramilitary force his company was developing for the U.A.E. and urged Mr. Trump to fire Rex W. Tillerson, then the secretary of state, whom the U.A.E. believed was insufficiently tough on its rival Qatar.

The documents show that Mr. Broidy has worked closely with George Nader, an adviser to the U.A.E. and a witness in the special counsel’s investigation, to help steer Trump administration policy on numerous issues in the Middle East. Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, is examining Mr. Nader’s possible role in funneling Emirati money to finance Mr. Trump’s political efforts. There is no indication that Mr. Mueller’s team is looking into Mr. Broidy.

In 2009, Mr. Broidy pleaded guilty to charges that he made nearly $1 million worth of illegal gifts to New York State officials in order to win an investment of $250 million from the state’s public pension fund. Among the gifts were trips to Israel and Italy, payouts to officials’ relatives and girlfriends and an investment in one relative’s production of a low-budget movie called “Chooch.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/13/us/politics/elliott-broidy-michael-cohen-payout.html

 

RNC Finance Committee here:

Chair Wynn: Resigns - sexual harassment/assault allegations

Deputy Chair Cohen: Under criminal investigation for bank fraud, wire fraud, and campaign finance violations

Deputy Chair Broidy: Resigns - paid $1.5M to a playboy bunny+hush agreement drafted by Cohen

 

Trump donor Elliott Broidy named in Ukraine criminal probe
Republican fundraiser Elliott Broidy under scrutiny over alleged deal with sanctioned Russian bank VTB.

The Prosecutor General of Ukraine has launched an investigation into claims surrounding an alleged multi-million dollar lobbying contract that names one of US President Donald Trump's most influential fundraisers, Elliott Broidy.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/03/trump-donor-ukraine-criminal-probe-180307124432781.html

 

So Cohen secretly audio records his clients and uses the same fake names for them in legal documents.

He has to be the stupidest "fixer" ever.

 

Lindsey Graham: Trump's lawyer is 'an idiot'

http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/senate/383122-graham-trumps-lawyer-is-an-idiot

 

At Least pubs like them over 18yrs and too dumb to play ping pong.

 

But he didn't use John or Jane Doe, that would have been better. He used searchable aliases that trace all back to him. Dumb.

 

If you think they engaged in blackmail, then you acknowledge that Trump is blackmailable, in which case you agree that he's a national security risk.

barfo

 

But Trump didn't know he was being blackmailed, only his attorney did, and he only acted to save Trump from having to tell the truth that he never slept with those evil whores.

Or something like that.

 

Trump Lawyer Michael Cohen Used the Same Delaware Company for Payment Deals to Two Women

Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, used the same Delaware limited-liability company in two secret deals relating to alleged sexual encounters involving his clients, according to people familiar with the matter.

Venture capitalist Elliott Broidy paid an initial installment of $62,500 to the company, Essential Consultants LLC, as part of Mr. Cohen’s $250,000 total fee for negotiating a nondisclosure agreement related to Mr. Broidy’s affair with a former Playboy model who alleged he had impregnated her, a person familiar with the matter said.

Federal prosecutors are examining money flowing in and out of Essential Consultants as part of a broad investigation into Mr. Cohen’s activities to silence women with allegations against Mr. Trump or those in his orbit, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Wall Street Journal first reported the $1.6 million agreement between Mr. Broidy—the Republican National Committee’s deputy finance chairman with ties to Mr. Trump—and the model on Friday. Mr. Broidy later resigned his RNC post.

Mr. Cohen also used Essential Consultants to pay $130,000 to former adult-film actress Stephanie Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels, so she wouldn’t discuss an alleged sexual encounter with Mr. Trump; the payment was made 12 days before the presidential election. Mr. Trump has said he didn’t know about the deal.

Mr. Broidy paid the remaining fee installments totaling $187,500 directly to Mr. Cohen after the Journal revealed in January that the Clifford payment was made through Essential Consultants, the person said.

Mr. Cohen and his lawyers didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The monthslong investigation stemmed partly from “suspicious activity reports” filed by banks, including one that included details of Mr. Cohen’s payment to Ms. Clifford, people familiar with the matter said.

FBI agents searched the office, home and hotel room of Mr. Cohen last Monday, seeking records of such payments, among other things. The searches were executed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as part of a probe by the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, which received a referral for the investigation by the office of special counsel Robert Mueller, according to court documents.

On Friday, the government said in a legal filing: “Given that the crimes being investigated involve acts of concealment by Cohen, the USAO-SDNY sought and obtained a search warrant—rather than using a subpoena—so that it would not have…to rely on Cohen to accurately make such a production.”

The Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office is examining whether Mr. Cohen committed bank fraud by, among other things, taking out a home-equity credit line to pay for the Clifford agreement, a person familiar with the matter said.

A spokeswoman for the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment.

Mr. Cohen transferred the payment to an attorney for Ms. Clifford from an Essential Consultants account at First Republic Bank , according to people familiar with the matter. He has said the funds came from his home-equity line at the same bank.

Investigators are examining whether Mr. Cohen fraudulently used a bank loan for something other than the purpose he described on his loan application, the person said.

The Journal previously reported that First Republic Bank, which Mr. Cohen used to wire the payment to Ms. Clifford’s lawyer in October 2016, conducted its own investigation into the transaction after receiving a subpoena from federal authorities, according to another person familiar with the matter.

First Republic sent its findings to the Treasury Department in a so-called SAR, or suspicious-activity report, the person said. Such reports are required to be sent to the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network when banks observe transactions that have no apparent lawful purpose or deviate inexplicably from a customer’s normal bank activity.

First Republic Bank declined to comment.

Part of the investigation into Mr. Cohen involves payments made by American Media Inc., publisher of the National Enquirer, and its officials including Chairman and Chief Executive David Pecker, a person familiar with the matter said.

Mr. Cohen communicated with Mr. Pecker and AMI’s chief content officer, Dylan Howard, during the course of negotiations for AMI to pay another Playboy model, Karen McDougal, to sell her story of an alleged 2006 affair with Mr. Trump to the National Enquirer, a person familiar with the matter said.

The Journal first revealed in November 2016 that AMI paid $150,000 to Ms. McDougal for her exclusive story of the alleged affair, which it then didn’t publish, a tactic known in the tabloid world as “catch and kill.”

Ms. McDougal filed suit last month seeking to extricate herself from that contract.

A spokesman for AMI said neither Mr. Cohen nor Mr. Trump influenced the company’s editorial decisions. “It is standard practice…to make inquiries of people who might be subjects of a story through their spokesperson,” the spokesman said.

Separately, Mr. Cohen succeeded around 2013 in killing a story Us Weekly was preparing about an alleged affair between Donald Trump Jr., who had been a judge a year earlier on the television show, “Celebrity Apprentice,” and one of the contestants, Aubrey O’Day, a member of the singing duo Dumblonde, according to people familiar with the matter.

The magazine, then owned by Wenner Media, had what staffers believed to be a solid source on the alleged affair by the younger Mr. Trump and called the Trump Organization for comment, according to the people involved in the matter. They received a call back from Mr. Cohen, who threatened legal action and became so irate that they muted the call while he spoke, one of these people said.

“We were all on speakerphone and huddled around the phone,” this person said. “He was just one of these New York characters where he was just like swearing at us and totally over-the-top threatening.”

The magazine’s staff didn’t believe it was a big story that would be worth a legal fight and had a good working relationship with the elder Mr. Trump on stories related to the TV show “The Apprentice,” so they dropped the story.

The story of the alleged affair was reported in entertainment media last month when Donald Trump Jr.’s wife filed for divorce; Mr. Cohen’s involvement in the Us Weekly story hasn’t previously been reported.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-...any-for-payment-deals-to-two-women-1523835216

 

Cohen has disclosed he has a 3rd client...

 

HAHAHAHAHAHA! This is now so much more entertaining to watch.