A former Playboy model who claimed she had an affair with Donald Trump sued Tuesday to be released from a 2016 legal agreement requiring her silence, becoming the second woman this month to challenge Trump allies' efforts during the presidential campaign to bury stories about extramarital relationships.
The model, Karen McDougal, is suing the company that owns The National Enquirer, American Media Inc., which paid her $150,000 and whose chief executive is a friend of Trump's. The other woman, adult entertainment star Stephanie Clifford, better known as Stormy Daniels, was paid $130,000 to stay quiet by the president's personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen. She filed suit earlier this month.
Both women, who argue that their contracts are invalid, are trying to get around clauses requiring them to resolve disputes in secretive arbitration proceedings rather than in open court. Trump has denied the affairs.
[Stormy Daniels sues Trump, claiming he never signed 'hush agreement'[
McDougal, in a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, claims that Cohen was secretly involved in her talks with American Media, and that the company and her lawyer at the time misled her about the deal. She also asserts that after she spoke with The New Yorker last month after it obtained notes she kept on Trump, American Media warned that "any further disclosures would breach Karen's contract" and "cause considerable monetary damages."
In an email to The New York Times, her new lawyer, Peter K. Stris, accused American Media of "a multifaceted effort to silence Karen McDougal."
"The lawsuit filed today aims to restore her right to her own voice," he said, adding, "We intend to invalidate the so-called contract that American Media Inc. imposed on Karen so she can move forward with the private life she deserves."
McDougal filed her suit just days before Clifford was to appear on "60 Minutes" to discuss her relationship with Trump and the efforts Cohen undertook on his client's behalf to pay for her silence.
Trump joined a legal effort last week seeking some $20 million in penalties tied to Clifford's agreement.
The court dispute has drawn public attention to an issue that was previously sidelined. And both women's suits could provide more fodder for federal complaints from the watchdog group Common Cause that the payoffs were, effectively, illegal campaign contributions.
Clifford and McDougal tell strikingly similar stories about their experiences with Trump, which included alleged trysts at the same Lake Tahoe golf tournament in 2006, dates at the same Beverly Hills hotel and promises of apartments as gifts. Their stories first surfaced in the The Wall Street Journal four days before the election, but got little traction in the swirl of news that followed Trump's victory. The women even shared the same Los Angeles lawyer, Keith Davidson, who has long worked for clients who sell their stories to tabloids.
McDougal negotiated with the country's leading tabloid news provider, American Media, which is known to buy and bury stories that might damage friends and allies of its chief executive, David J. Pecker, a practice known as "catch and kill."
McDougal's legal complaint alleges that she did not know about the practice, or about Pecker's friendship with Trump, when she began talking to company representatives in spring 2016, shortly after Trump locked up the Republican nomination.
American Media has previously acknowledged that Trump had been friends with Pecker, but said that he had never tried to influence coverage at American Media's publications.
McDougal has said she was ambivalent about selling her story on the tabloid news market, but felt that her hand was forced after a hint of the alleged affair appeared in May 2016 on social media. Convinced something more would come out, she was determined to tell her story on her terms, her suit says.
A mutual friend connected her to Davidson, who, she said, told her the story could be worth millions. He arranged an interview with Dylan Howard, American Media's chief content officer, in Los Angeles. Davidson told her before the interview that American Media would put $500,000 into an escrow account for her, and that "a seven-figure publishing contract awaited her," the complaint reads.
Howard spent several hours pressing McDougal on the details of her story. But several days later, the media company declined to buy it, the complaint reads, and "Mr. Davidson revealed that, in fact, there was no money in escrow."
American Media told The Times last month that it decided not to print McDougal's story because it could not verify important details, but it acknowledged that it discussed her allegations with Cohen, the president's lawyer, saying it did so as part of its reporting process.
The tabloid company showed renewed interest in the summer of 2016, when McDougal began talks with ABC News. This time, American Media offered a different deal.
Davidson informed her that American Media would buy her story but "not publish it" because of Pecker's relationship with Trump," the suit says. The payment would be $150,000, with Davidson and others involved on her behalf taking 45 percent. More alluring to McDougal, who is now a fitness specialist, was that the media company would feature her on its covers and in regular health and fitness columns, the complaint says.
As American Media and Davidson pushed her to sign the deal Aug. 5, McDougal expressed misgivings. But, her suit says, Davidson and Howard argued in an urgent Skype call that the deal to promote her would "kick start and revitalize" her career, given that she was "old now." She was 45.
In all, they said, the contract would obligate American Media to run more than 100 columns or articles and at least two covers featuring her. When she asked Davidson what she should do if her story leaked, Davidson responded in an email, "IF YOU DENY YOU ARE SAFE," and urged her to sign as soon as possible, according to the court documents.
The Times reported last month that Davidson sent Cohen an email on Aug. 5, 2016, asking him to call. Davidson then told Cohen over the phone that the deal had been completed, according to a person familiar with the conversation.
The timeline provided in the lawsuit shows that Davidson's email came as he and American Media were still hashing out the terms of the deal, which McDougal did not sign until the following day, Aug. 6. Cohen told The Times last month that he did not recall the communications.
After signing the contract, McDougal grew frustrated when she did not hear about columns or cover shoots for several weeks. She later figured out why. Though the agreement explicitly mentioned "a monthly column" on aging and fitness for OK! and Star, and "four posts each month" on Radar Online, it only gave American Media "the right" to print them. It was not an obligation.
"She was tricked into signing it while being misled as to its contents (including by her own lawyer, on whose advice she was entitled to rely)," the lawsuit reads. So far, American Media has run one cover and roughly two dozen columns or posts featuring her. The company later amended her contract to let her respond to "legitimate press inquiries" about Trump.
Stris contends that his client was misled and that the contract was executed under fraudulent circumstances, giving her the right to sue in court rather than proceed in arbitration.
Rebecca Ruiz contributed reporting.