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      Stormy Daniels to Michael Cohen: Fox News movie brought back memory of sex with Trump

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      Stormy Daniels has said she could not remember key details of the sexual liaison she claims to have had with Donald Trump, until seeing a film about Roger Ailes’ sexual harassment of women at Fox News prompted her to remember.“I went to see that movie Bombshell,” she said, “and suddenly it just came back.”Daniels, an adult film star and director whose birth name is Stephanie Clifford, was speaking to Michael Cohen on the former Trump lawyer’s podcast, Mea Culpa, made by Audio Up Media and distributed by PodcastOne and LiveXLive. Excerpts were shared with the Guardian.Daniels also described Trump “doing his best yet horrifyingly disturbing impression of Burt Reynolds”, on a bed, clad only in his underwear.Daniels claims to have had sex with Trump in Nevada in 2006. He denies it, but a $130,000 hush money payment to Daniels reimbursed by Trump contributed to Cohen’s downfall in 2018.Trump’s longtime fixer was jailed for tax fraud, lying to Congress and violations of campaign finance law. He cooperated with investigators and published a book, Disloyal, while completing a three-year sentence.The payment to Daniels, and Cohen’s role in a payment to another woman, Playboy model Karen McDougal, during the 2016 election, are at the centre of ongoing investigations. Stripped of the protections of office, Trump is vulnerable to prosecution.Daniels’ appearance on Cohen’s podcast marks a rapprochement between the two. After Cohen orchestrated Trump’s attempts to keep Daniels quiet, Daniels had harsh words for Cohen in her own book, Full Disclosure.Daniels called Cohen a “dim bulb” and “a complete fucking moron”. She also detailed what she claims was a threat to her safety and that of her daughter, allegedly from Trump. In 2018, she said: “It never occurred to any of these men that I would someday have a voice.”Cohen is now a vocal critic of his old boss. Daniels remains a thorn in Trump’s side. “Both of our stories will be forever linked with Donald Trump, but also with one another,” Cohen said, apologising for inflicting “needless pain” and adding: “Thanks for giving me a second chance.”The details of Daniels’ alleged liaison with Trump at a charity golf event in Lake Tahoe in 2006 are well known, not least thanks to her book, which the Guardian first reported.“I couldn’t remember,” she told Cohen, “how I got from standing in that bathroom doorway to underneath him on the bed, like I couldn’t remember how my dress came off or how my shoes got off, because I know I took my shoes off because I clearly remember putting them back on and they were buckled, like they’re really gold strappy heels that were not easy to, you know, come off.“And I just, there’s like 60 seconds where I just had no recollection of it and it’s not in the book, and nobody really wanted to ask about it. They just wanted to know the details of what his appendage, or lack of appendage, looked like. And I was like, it really bothered me for, like, years, like, I definitely wasn’t drinking so I’m like why don’t I remember this.“And I’ll never forget this moment. I went to see that movie Bombshell, and suddenly it just came back.”Bombshell was directed by Jay Roach, starred Nicole Kidman, Charlize Theron and Margot Robbie and was released in 2019. It told the story of the downfall of Roger Ailes, chief executive of Fox News and a key Trump ally, over sexual harassment.Trump denies accusations of sexual harassment and assault by multiple women. Shortly before the 2016 election, Fox News killed a story about Trump and Daniels. Ailes resigned in July that year and died the following May.Daniels’ own case against Trump for defamation is heading for the supreme court. She told Cohen: “I’ve already lost everything, so I’m taking it all the way.”Of Lake Tahoe in 2006, Daniels also told Cohen she now remembered thinking, ‘Oh fuck, how do I get myself in this situation. And I remember even thinking I could definitely fight his fat ass, I can definitely outrun him. There’s a bodyguard at the door. But I wasn’t threatened, I was not physically threatened.“And then so I tried to sidestep … I was like, trying to remember really quickly, where did I leave my purse, like I gotta get out of here. And I went to sidestep and he stood up off the bed and was like ‘This is your chance.’ And I was like, ‘What?’ and he was like, ‘You need to show me how bad you want it or do you just want to go back to the trailer park.’”Daniels has said Trump told her he would get her a slot on The Apprentice, the reality TV show for which he was then most famous. At the time of the alleged encounter, Trump’s third wife, Melania Trump, had recently given birth to their son, Barron.Daniels told Cohen she went to the bathroom, then “was genuinely like startled to see him waiting” when she came out.“I just froze,” she said, “and I didn’t know what to say. He had stripped down to his underwear and was perched on the bed doing his best yet horrifyingly disturbing impression of Burt Reynolds.”She “didn’t say anything for years”, she said, “because I didn’t remember.” Now the star of a ghost-hunting reality TV show, Spooky Babes, she added: “I’ve been face to face with evil in the most intimate way. Demons don’t scare me any more.”Daniels has described what she says happened next. Speaking to CBS 60 Minutes in 2018, she said: “And I was like, ‘Ugh, here we go.’ And I just felt like maybe it was sort of … I had it coming for making a bad decision for going to someone’s room alone.”The interviewer, Anderson Cooper, said: “And you had sex with him.”“Yes,” Daniels said. More

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      Disloyal review: Michael Cohen's mob hit on Trump entertains – but will it shift votes?

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      Michael Cohen is no saint. Aside from the obvious, Donald Trump’s former fixer has never entered into a formal cooperation agreement with federal prosecutors, a fact duly noted by the US attorneys’ office for the southern district of New York in its sentencing memorandum. Because of that, the “inability to fully vet his criminal history and reliability impact his utility as a witness”.On top of that, Cohen boasts in his memoir of his exposure to the mob as a teenager, and even compares his reception in federal prison to that accorded to Al Capone and El Chapo.Yes, it’s easy to distrust Cohen. On that score, Disloyal should be taken with more than a grain of salt. Its author is no hero.But that doesn’t make the book any less interesting. For all its black-hearted opportunism and self-aggrandizement, it delivers a readable and bile-filled take on Trump and his minions.What the book lacks in genuine contrition is made up for with score-settling and name-calling. Like Omarosa Manigault Newman before him, Cohen entertains, albeit at the expense of others: Don Jr, Jared Kushner, Roger Stone and Steve Bannon, for starters.Right off the bat, Cohen shares that the president lacks respect for his namesake. According to Cohen, Trump Sr would repeatedly tell him Donnie possessed the “worst fucking judgment” of anyone he had ever met. That’s saying something.Organized crime pervades the book, and Cohen does not sound at all disapprovingLikewise, asked by his oldest son if he is nervous about appearing in a televised wrestling match with the WWE impresario Vince McMahon, Trump Sr banishes him and comments: “What kind of stupid fucking question is that?”Humiliation is central to Trump and Cohen’s MOs – and it doesn’t end there.Shown a photo of his sons’ hunting escapades, Trump is angered, and again tears into his hapless offspring: “You think you’re a fucking big man? Get the fuck out of my office.” He sounds a lot like Tony Soprano. More important, he shared Melania’s displeasure over junior’s penchant for big-game hunting.As it happens, an earlier book by Ivana Trump recorded that it was she who wanted to call their son Donald Jr, to which Donald Sr replied: “You can’t do that!”His explanation: “What if he’s a loser?”Ivanka Trump is immune from the president’s derision. After all, Donald once told Howard Stern that if he weren’t her father, he’d have dated her. Cohen is not her dad, though, so is less hesitant in tattling on the favorite child.After writing about how Ivanka once joined him and his wife for lasagne dinners, Cohen recalls a brush with the law in connection with Trump Soho, an ill-fated condominium hotel in Manhattan, and Ivanka’s elaborate plans for Trump Moscow. Once again, the Trumps are caught in the headlights of the Manhattan district attorney.In Cohen’s telling, after first adopting a “hands-off policy” to the Russia project, Ivanka became enthusiastic when she learned the building would contain a health and wellness center named for her. She was prepared to hire the architect Zaha Hadid, discarding drawings supplied by Cohen.William Barr’s efforts to be Roy Cohn 2.0 – Trump’s consigliere in corridors of power Cohen could never reach – are realIn the end, Cohen laments, “all three kids were starved for their father’s love”.Jared Kushner also emerges worse for wear. Words like “inexperienced” and “unqualified” tumble on to the page. Cohen observes that “Kushner was supremely arrogant, a real snob” with an “exaggerated sense of his importance and intelligence”.Elsewhere, however, Cohen expresses admiration for macho swagger and strut. So confusing.Speaking of which, Disloyal offers a window into the president’s views of Vladimir Putin. Cohen records that on numerous occasions Trump told him the Russian president was “the richest man in the world by a multiple”.Trump is quoted explaining: “If you think about it, Putin controls 25% of the Russian economy … imagine controlling 25% of the wealth of a country. Wouldn’t that be fucking amazing.”Consistent with that take, Trump muses that a Russian oligarch who bought property from him was actually doing Putin’s bidding.“The oligarchs are just fronts for Putin,” Trump purportedly said. “That’s all they are doing – investing Putin’s money.” More

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      Michael Cohen alleges Trump racist outbursts and role in Stormy Daniels payoff in new book

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      Michael Cohen’s tell-all memoir makes the case that president Donald Trump is “guilty of the same crimes” that landed his former fixer in federal prison, offering a blow-by-blow account of Trump’s alleged role in a hush money scandal that once overshadowed his presidency.It also alleges that Trump made numerous racist remarks, according to the Washington Post, including saying that Barack Obama only got into Columbia University and Harvard Law School because of “fucking affirmative action”. Trump had “hatred and contempt” for Obama, the book says. Trump began his political career by promoting the “birther” conspiracy theory that falsely claimed Obama was not born in the US. CNN also reports that Cohen’s book claims that before he became president “Trump hired a ‘Faux-Bama’ to participate in a video in which Trump ‘ritualistically belittled the first black president and then fired him’.”According to the Post, Cohen alleges that the US president has a “low opinion of all black folks”.Trump said: “Tell me one country run by a black person that isn’t a shithole. They are all complete fucking toilets,” Cohen claims, and praised apartheid-era South Africa, saying: “Mandela fucked the whole country up. Now it’s a shithole. Fuck Mandela. He was no leader.”
Of all the crises Cohen confronted working for Trump, none proved as vexing as the adult film actor Stormy Daniels and her claims of an extramarital affair with Trump, Cohen writes in Disloyal: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J Trump.Trump, despite his later protestations, green-lighted the $130,000 payment to silence Daniels ahead of the 2016 election, reasoning he would “have to pay” his wife a far greater sum if the affair ever became known, Cohen writes, adding the president later reimbursed him with “fake legal fees”.“It never pays to settle these things, but many, many friends have advised me to pay,” Trump said, according to Cohen. “If it comes out, I’m not sure how it would play with my supporters. But I bet they’d think it’s cool that I slept with a porn star.”The White House called Cohen’s memoir “fan fiction”.“He readily admits to lying routinely but expects people to believe him now so that he can make money from book sales,” White House spokesman Brian Morgenstern said in a statement. “It’s unfortunate that the media is exploiting this sad and desperate man to attack president Trump.”The Associated Press obtained an early copy of the book, which is scheduled to be released on Tuesday.Cohen writes that Trump’s three oldest children came to his office after Trump’s acerbic and racist campaign announcement in 2015, asking him to convince their father to drop out of the race because of the damage his rhetoric would do to the company.“MC, you’ve got to get dad to stop the campaign. It’s killing the company,” Cohen quotes Ivanka as saying.Cohen says Trump was undeterred and unconcerned with the harm to his businesses. “Plus, I will never get the Hispanic vote,” Trump said, according to Cohen. “Like the blacks, they’re too stupid to vote for Trump. They’re not my people.”The Washington Post, which also said it had obtained a copy, also reports that Cohen writes that Trump “inadvertently” made a crude sexual comment about Cohen’s 15-year-old daughter, saying: “Look at that piece of ass. I would love some of that.”And, according to the Post, Cohen alleges that he and Trump watched a strip show which included simulated urination in Las Vegas in 2013.On Russia, the Post reported that Cohen wrote Trump’s admiration of president Vladimir Putin was simply down to his love of money, saying he wrongly identified Putin as “the richest man in the world by a multiple”.It reported: “Trump loved Putin, Cohen wrote, because the Russian leader had the ability “to take over an entire nation and run it like it was his personal company — like the Trump Organization, in fact.”Cohen, who pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations and other crimes, including lying to Congress, calls himself the “star witness” of a hush-money conspiracy that still could culminate in charges for Trump after he leaves office. He described his new book as a “fundamental piece of evidence” of the president’s guilt.Cohen’s allegations – his most detailed to date – are part of an unsparing and deeply personal put-down of Trump. Cohen assails Trump as an “organized crime don” and “master manipulator”, but allows that he saw much of himself in a man he once considered a father figure.“I care for Donald Trump, even to this day,” Cohen writes, “and I had and still have a lot of affection for him.”I thought Trump was a visionary with a no-nonsense attitude and the charisma to attract all kinds of votersMichael CohenCohen remains at a loss to explain his unswerving allegiance to a cut-throat businessman who abandoned him at the most vulnerable point in his life. He likens his fealty to Trump to a mental illness and said he thought of himself as acting like an alcoholic or drug user in need of an intervention.“It seemed to them that I wouldn’t listen to anyone, not even the people who loved me most, as I gradually gave up control of my mind to Trump,” Cohen writes. “I confess I never really did understand why pleasing Trump meant so much to me,” Cohen adds. “To this day I don’t have the full answer.”Cohen says in the book that he stayed loyal to Trump for so long, despite the dirty work and volatile personality, because he wanted to stay close to his celebrity and power. “I was the canary in the coal mine for the millions of Americans who are still mesmerized by the power of Trump,” Cohen writes.The memoir offers an introspective – and at times self-loathing – apology for the role Cohen played in Trump’s political ascent. He urged Trump for years to run for president but now laments that his election “led the nation and maybe even the world to the brink of disaster”.“I thought Trump was a visionary with a no-nonsense attitude and the charisma to attract all kinds of voters,” he writes. But the real reason he wanted Trump in the White House, Cohen concedes, “was because I wanted the power that he would bring to me”.But Cohen expresses little to no remorse for his federal crimes, saying he was “railroaded” by the government and pleaded guilty after prosecutors threatened to indict his wife.“I was in the grip of the conviction machine,” he writes. “I was the ham sandwich, and I had been indicted.”Cohen has led a publicity blitz around his memoir even as he continues serving his federal sentence in home confinement. A federal judge ruled this summer that authorities had retaliated against him – sending him back to prison in upstate New York after he had been furloughed because of the coronavirus pandemic – for publishing the book ahead of the November election.He was released to home confinement in July and the government lifted a ban on him speaking publicly.“This story is all I have left for my wife, my children and the country I love so much,” Cohen writes.Associated Press contributed to this report More

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      Michael Cohen to be released from prison and serve sentence at home

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      Donald Trump’s longtime fixer will be released from federal prison Thursday amid concerns of coronavirus outbreaks Michael Cohen has been serving a federal prison sentence in New York. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s longtime personal lawyer and fixer, will be released from federal prison Thursday and is expected to serve the remainder […] More