President Trump’s personal lawyer and confidant Michael Cohen negotiated a settlement for a top GOP fundraiser who impregnated a Playboy model, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.
Cohen negotiated the deal, worth $1.6 million, on behalf of Elliott Broidy, a California-based venture capitalist, close ally of President Trump, and the deputy finance chair of the Republican National Committee. Cohen is a national deputy finance chairman for the RNC. The payment was negotiated towards the end of 2017, according to the Journal.
Broidy in a statement to the Wall Street Journal confirmed the affair with the unnamed woman and that the woman informed him she had become pregnant.
“She alone decided that she did not want to continue with the pregnancy and I offered to help her financially during this difficult period,” Broidy said.
The deal was negotiated by the same players involved in a October 2016 $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels, an ex-porn star who claims to have had a one-night stand with Trump in 2006. Cohen arranged for that payment, a transaction Trump has denied involvement in. Daniels at the time of the payment was being represented by Keith Davidson, the same attorney who represented the woman in the Broidy negotiations, according to the Journal.
The FBI raided Cohen’s office, home and hotel on Monday. The search warrant reportedly sought information related to the Daniels payment, as well as a $150,000 payment by National Enquirer’s parent company in 2016 to buy the rights of claims made by another Playboy model, Karen McDougal that she had an affair with Trump. National Enquirer never ran McDougal’s allegations and gave her a fitness column instead, prompting speculation that the payment was intended to keep her allegations from coming out in what is known in the tabloid world as a “catch and kill.” National Enquirer’s parent company, American Media Inc. is run by David Pecker, a longtime friend of Trump’s.
It’s not clear what role, if any, Cohen had in that transaction.
