WASHINGTON: In July 2006, real estate tycoon and reality television star Donald Trump met an adult film actress, Stormy Daniels, at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe.
On Thursday (Mar 30), that meeting culminated in the first ever criminal indictment of a former president of the United States.
These are the events leading up to the politically explosive case and Daniels’ role in it:
LAKE TAHOE
In her 2018 tell-all book Full Disclosure, Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, recounts her fateful encounter with Trump at the Nevada golf resort on the shores of Lake Tahoe.
A picture taken at the time shows them posing together – Trump in a red hat, Daniels in a black top – at a porn studio booth where Daniels was working as a “greeter”.
Daniels was 27 at the time and Trump 60. His third wife, Melania, had given birth to their son Barron about four months earlier.
In her book, Daniels said one of Trump’s bodyguards invited her to have dinner with The Apprentice star in his penthouse.
They proceeded to have what “may have been the least impressive sex I’d ever had”, she writes in an account that also includes an unflattering description of Trump’s anatomy.
Trump has denied they ever had sex and has accused Daniels of “extortion” and a “total con job”.
Daniels said she remained in touch with Trump over the next year in the hope he would get her on his reality television show but it never happened.
HUSH MONEY PAYMENT
Fast forward to 2016 and Trump is the Republican presidential nominee.
The National Enquirer, a tabloid newspaper owned by a Trump ally, discovers that Daniels is seeking bidders for her potentially politically damaging story about her relationship with Trump.
The tabloid put her in touch with Michael Cohen, Trump’s personal lawyer and fixer nicknamed “The Pitbull”.
Cohen, who has since turned against Trump, has acknowledged arranging a US$130,000 “hush money” payment to Daniels in exchange for her silence about the 2006 tryst.
Daniels and Trump – under the respective pseudonyms Peggy Peterson and David Dennison – were the parties to a nondisclosure agreement prepared by Cohen that has emerged in court filings.
The payment was revealed by The Wall Street Journal in January 2018 and forms the basis for the charges Trump faces.
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