Trump indicted: How did Michael Cohen arrange hush payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal?

WASHINGTON – The indictment against Donald Trump hasn’t been unveiled, but Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has been investigating hush-money payments before the 2016 election totaling $280,000 to silence two women who claimed to have had sex with Trump.

Legal experts have said the charges under New York law could include a misdemeanor for falsification of business records, for allegedly calling the payments legal fees, linked to a felony for a campaign finance violation because of the benefit to Trump’s presidential campaign.

Trump has denied wrongdoing and slammed the investigation as politically motivated. He initially denied the payments, but has acknowledged reimbursing his former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen.

“The Democrats have lied, cheated and stolen in their obsession with trying to ‘Get Trump,’ but now they’ve done the unthinkable – indicting a completely innocent person in an act of blatant Election Interference,” Trump said in a statement Thursday.

Here’s what we know about the payments:

Who is Stormy Daniels?

The payments were outlined in sworn testimony before the House Oversight and Reform Committee in 2019.

Cohen and at least one of the women, porn actress Stormy Daniels, who received $130,000, have appeared before the grand jury. The other woman, Playboy model Karen McDougal, received $150,000.

Cohen told the House panel he was reimbursed a total of $420,000 for his role in the payments, in part to cover his taxes and a $60,000 bonus for himself. The payments were made – some in checks signed by Trump – in $35,000 monthly installments under the guise of a legal retainer, Cohen said.

Cohen said he created a shell company called Essential Consultants to pay Daniels and hide the deal from his wife.

Daniels’ lawyer, Clark Brewster, said the indictment indicated “no one is above the law.”

Who is Karen McDougal?

Cohen funneled the payment to McDougal through an arrangement with National Enquirer under a strategy called “catch and kill.” The strategy called for the tabloid to pay ostensibly for McDougal’s story and then kill her story after preventing her from telling anyone else about it.

Cohen was convicted and imprisoned in part for his role in the payments.David Pecker, an executive at the company that published the National Enquirer, appeared before the grand jury Monday. The tabloid was fined $187,500 for helping Trump’s campaign.

Contributing: Kevin Johnson, Josh Meyer

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Hush money payments key to New York investigation into Trump