Donald Trump had a nine-month extramarital affair with the 1998 Playboy Playmate of the year, according to her account of the relationship obtained by a US magazine.
The affair began in 2006 and the president showed the woman his wife’s bedroom in Trump Tower and took her to his private bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel, according to the eight-page, handwritten account.
The woman, Karen McDougal, confirmed in the The New Yorker magazine story published online on Friday that she wrote the account.
But she said she was constrained in what else she could say publicly about Mr Trump because she had signed a confidentiality agreement.
The affair ended in part after Ms McDougal started feeling guilty about it and after Mr Trump made an offensive comment about her mother’s age as well as a vulgar remark about the anatomy of black men, the magazine reported.
The story said Ms McDougal was paid 150,000 dollars (£107,000) during the 2016 presidential campaign for the rights to her account of an affair with any “then-married man” by the supermarket tabloid National Enquirer, which never ran it.
Just before Election Day, The Wall Street Journal reported the tabloid, whose publisher, David Pecker, is a longtime friend of Mr Trump’s, had paid for Ms McDougal’s story but was not printing it, a tabloid industry practice known as “catch and kill”.
Former staffers at American Media, the company that publishes the Enquirer and other gossip sites, have told The Associated Press the company often bought the rights to unflattering stories about certain celebrities.
The practice, described by six former employees who had participated in such deals, could give Mr Pecker leverage over celebrities so that he could elicit future favours, such as appearing on his magazines’ covers.
The company has approached Ms McDougal about extending her contract barring her from talking about Mr Trump in recent months as the behind-the-scenes negotiations to keep porn star Stormy Daniels’ allegation of an afair with the tycoon have been made public, the magazine reported.
American Media has said it did not find Ms McDougal’s account of an affair with Mr Trump credible and paid her to write fitness columns.
In a statement to The New Yorker, the company denied that having exclusive rights to Ms McDougal’s story left it with any influence over the president, saying that contention “while flattering, is laughable”.
The White House said Mr Trump denies having an affair with Ms McDougal.
The alleged affair occurred not long after Mr Trump married his third wife, Melania, who had recently given birth to a son, the magazine reported.
Ms Daniels, whose real name is Stefanie Clifford, has also said she had an extramarital affair with Mr Trump beginning in 2006.
This week, Mr Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, said he paid Ms Clifford 130,000 dollars (£93,000) with his own money in October 2016 as part of a deal that would keep her from publicly discussing her account.
The same Los Angeles lawyer who represented Ms Clifford in that transaction also represented Ms McDougal in her negotiations with American Media, the magazine said.
Ms McDougal told The New Yorker she regretted signing legal documents that constrained what she could say.
“Every girl who speaks is paving the way for another,” she told the magazine.
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