The lawyer who represented both Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal in their hush money deals with Donald Trump, is now cooperating with Robert Mueller.

Keith Davidson

Courtesy of WaPo: 

Keith Davidson, the former attorney for two women who were paid to keep quiet about their alleged affairs with Donald Trump, has been contacted by federal authorities investigating Trump attorney Michael Cohen and is cooperating with them, a spokesman for Davidson confirmed. 

Davidson was asked to provide “certain limited electronic information” for the probe led by prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, spokesman Dave Wedge said. “He has done so and will continue to cooperate to the fullest extent possible under the law,” Wedge said in a statement Friday. 

Shortly before the 2016 election, Davidson negotiated a confidentiality agreement with Cohen under which porn star Stormy Daniels was paid $130,000. 

Davidson also represented Karen McDougal, a Playboy centerfold, in the $150,000 agreement she struck in August 2016 with the National Enquirer’s parent company, American Media Inc., for the rights to her story. AMI never published the story.

The impetus for this cooperation is likely due to the fact that the records seized from Cohen by the FBI included tapes that he recorded of conversations with Davidson.

I am guessing that Davidson would do almost ANYTHING to keep those records out of the newspapers. 

And the noose gets just a little bit tighter.

Stormy Daniels fully cooperating with federal investigators, while the Summer Zervos defamation case pushes forward. Update!

Stormy Daniels is cooperating with federal investigators probing 2016 non-disclosure agreement and $130,000 payment she received from Pres. Trump’s longtime personal attorney. https://t.co/gJagoFny4S - @NBCInvestigates

— NBC News (@NBCNews) April 10, 2018

Courtesy of NBC News: 

Adult film actress Stormy Daniels is cooperating with federal investigators looking into a $130,000 payment she received from President Donald Trump's personal attorney, multiple sources familiar with the proceedings told NBC News. 

The cooperation is in connection with a broader federal probe of the attorney, Michael Cohen, which triggered a raid on his office and hotel room on Monday.

Oh I bet Daniels is cooperating, and probably with a giant smile on her face.

It should also be noted that the investigation is focused on just on the $130,000 dollar payment to Daniels, but also the payoff that Playmate Karen McDougal received.

Courtesy of the Daily Beast:  

The FBI agents who raided Michael Cohen’s office were reportedly looking for “records about payments to two women who claim they had affairs with Mr. Trump,” and materials related to the "National Enquirer’s role in silencing" former Playboy model Karen McDougal, according to The New York Times. The raid—which sought materials related to Cohen’s $130,000 payout to Stormy Daniels and the $150,000 payment made to McDougal from the parent company of the Enquirer—was carried out by the public corruption unit of the U.S. Attorney's office in Manhattan. 

Ans while all of this is going on Summer Zervos is attempting to move forward with HER defamation lawsuit.

Courtesy of CNN: 

The lawyer representing former "Apprentice" contestant Summer Zervos in her defamation lawsuit against President Donald Trump filed a memorandum opposing Trump's attempt to have the case temporarily suspended until his appeal, which is pending, has been decided. 

In one of the exhibits attached to Tuesday's filing, Zervos details the harassment and threats she received after Trump denied her claims that he sexually assaulted her. 

"Immediately after he made each derogatory statement, I would get calls and people coming to my restaurant threatening me or my business," said Zervos, who runs a restaurant in California. 

"They would shout 'lying c--t' or 'lying b--tch' into the phone and say I should die, or say that they would drive us out of business," she said. "Several customers told me specifically that they would no longer come to my restaurant because I had lied. Other people called and placed fake take-out orders to hurt my business. I worried constantly for my safety, the safety of my family and the people I work with." 

"Because I'm a Republican and small-business owner and live among many supporters of Defendant [Trump], it was especially bad," Zervos said.

You know Donald Trump can fire Mueller, and bomb Syria until the cows come home, but clearly that is not going to make any of this go away.

Update: We are now learning that during that FBI raids of Cohen's office and residence, that they were also searching for evidence linking back to the Access Hollywood tape.

Courtesy of the NYT: 

The F.B.I. agents who raided the office and hotel of President Trump’s lawyer on Monday were seeking all records related to the “Access Hollywood” tape in which Mr. Trump was heard making vulgar comments about women, according to three people who have been briefed on the contents of a federal search warrant. 

The search warrant also sought evidence of whether the lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, tried to suppress damaging information about Mr. Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign. 

It is not clear what role, if any, Mr. Cohen played regarding the tape, which was made public a month before the election. But the fact that the agents were seeking documents related to the tape reveals a new front in the investigation into Mr. Cohen that is being led by the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan.

Well isn't THAT interesting?

Attorney for Stormy Daniels demands that Trump Organization preserve all documents pertaining to hush money paid to his client.

Courtesy of Politico:

The attorney for adult film actress Stormy Daniels has asked the Trump Organization to preserve records related to a $130,000 payment that President Donald Trump’s lawyer made to Daniels just weeks before the 2016 election. 

In letters sent Thursday to the Trump Organization, First Republic Bank and City National Bank, Michael Avenatti, a lawyer for Daniels, asked that all documents connected to the payment be preserved, including emails and communications with Trump family members. The demand is part of a civil lawsuit Daniels filed this month seeking to void an October 2016 nondisclosure agreement in which she was paid in return for her silence about an alleged affair she had with Trump nearly a decade earlier. 

Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, is one of three women suing Trump over his alleged sexual behavior. While the lawsuits are in their earliest stages, they threaten to embroil the president in years of litigation that could expose embarrassing details of his alleged sexual relationships, uncover evidence of possible hush-money payments and draw the scrutiny of federal campaign finance regulators. Ultimately, the president himself could be forced to testify or give depositions under oath. 

Avenatti said Thursday’s letters are just the beginning.

By the way, Avenatti also posted this late last night on Twitter.

If “a picture is worth a thousand words,” how many words is this worth?????#60minutes #pleasedenyit #basta pic.twitter.com/eCkU0JBZaR

— Michael Avenatti (@MichaelAvenatti) March 23, 2018

I have a feeling that is going to send a cold chill up someone's spine.

There were a lot of choices for this last post of the day, but I thought I would end with one about Stormy Daniels, because, just like Karen McDougal, I think that her story is going to prove very damaging to Donald Trump.

As well as to the Republican party. 

There are some who will argue that Trump is inoculated from all of this, and that the proof of that is in the fact that he got elected even with all of those sexual assault allegations swirling around.

However my answer to that argument is that the Women's March was inspired by the fact that Trump was elected despite those allegations, and that the #MeToo movement actually grew out of this newly energized female activism.

In short, Trump's election was such a shock to our collective systems that it jolted people awake in a way they simply had not been awake before.

The result has been a changed atmosphere in which allegations of sexual assault, sexual harassment, and even gender inequality are taken FAR MORE seriously than they ever have been in decades past.

So in this new atmosphere these stories about Donald Trump's extramarital affairs, bullying by his attorneys, and attempts to buy women's silence is being viewed through newly attentive eyes.

That has created a powerful desire to somehow remove Trump from the White House, and to punish all of those who supported him during the campaign, and to especially punish all of those Republican politicians who stand with him today.

Yes Mueller's investigation may provide the evidence needed to start impeachment proceedings against Trump, but it will very likely be the politically active women in this country who will be the driving force to replace the obstructionist Republicans with Democrats who will actually it through.

And every time we read about Trump assaulting a woman, treating a woman like a prostitute, or having a woman bullied into submission, only serves to further inspire this women's movement to work harder to ensure that there will never again be a Misogynist-in-Chief in the People's House.

It also goes without saying that being the party which supported the Misogynist-in-Chief is not exactly an enviable position.

So like I said, these interviews and news stories, about women who were in some way wronged by Donald Trump, are simply NOT good news for the Republicans.

Here is that CNN interview with former Playmate Karen McDougal concerning her affair with Donald Trump. Yes, it's icky.

Courtesy of the New York Times:  

The former Playboy model Karen McDougal gave her first television interview about the affair she alleges she had with Donald J. Trump more than a decade ago, saying that he offered her money after their first sexual encounter. 

“After we had been intimate, he tried to pay me, and I actually did not take that,” she told Anderson Cooper of CNN in an interview broadcast on Thursday night. “I looked at him and said, ‘That’s not me, I’m not that kind of girl.’” 

As a security aide of Mr. Trump’s drove her home, she said, “I started crying, I was really sad — it really hurt me.” 

But, she said, in spite of that encounter in 2006, “I went back,” conducting what she described as a 10-month, serious relationship that she finally ended when she could no longer bear the guilt of betraying Mr. Trump’s wife then-new wife, Melania.

You would probably think that if you were not a prostitute and somebody offered you money as if you were one, that you would be too humiliated to see that person again.

However not in McDougal's case.

According to the ex-Playmate she continued to see Trump for about ten months, and had unprotected sex with him dozens and dozens of times. 

According to McDougal this was not just a sexual affair but an affair of the heart, where both parties told the other that they loved them.

McDougal even seemed to think that the relationship would grow into something more.

She seemed to believe that she was destined to be Mrs. Donald Trump number four.

So of course Trump compared her to his number one love:

Ms. McDougal said Mr. Trump had compared her, favorably, to his daughter. “He said I was beautiful like her and, ‘You’re a smart girl,’” she said.

You may remember that Trump also compared Stormy Daniels to Ivanka. Which apparently is his idea of the ultimate compliment to his mistresses.

Make of that what you will.

It appears that Stormy Daniels has reinforcements.

Courtesy of  NBC News:

Adult film actress Stormy Daniels underwent a polygraph exam in 2011 about her relationship with Donald Trump, and the examiner found there was a more than 99 percent probability she told the truth when she said they had unprotected sex in 2006, according to a copy of the report obtained by NBC News Tuesday. 

Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, took the lie detector test at the request of a magazine that interviewed her in 2011, but didn’t publish the content at the time. 

The report is accompanied by a sworn declaration from the examiner, signed on Monday, March 19, 2018, attesting to the polygraph report’s authenticity. Details of the report were first published by The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday.

Now that by itself is pretty unfortunate news for a certain tangerine teapot tyrant.

However it was only the beginning of the shitty Trump news for today.

Courtesy of the New York Times:

A former Playboy model who claimed she had an affair with Donald J. Trump sued on 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 President Trump’s. The other woman, the 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.

Ms. McDougal, in a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, claims that Mr. Cohen was secretly involved in her talks with A.M.I., and that the media 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 Mr. Trump, A.M.I. warned that “any further disclosures would breach Karen’s contract” and “cause considerable monetary damages.”

Kinda feels a little coordinated doesn't it?

Well if it is that is a damn smart play.  After all there is strength in numbers.

And speaking of numbers, they are continuing to grow.

Courtesy of Bloomberg:

President Donald Trump can’t avoid a former "Apprentice" contestant’s defamation lawsuit and may be forced to respond under oath to allegations of sexual assault and his treatment of women. 

Summer Zervos, a contender on The Apprentice in 2005, sued Trump in January 2017 alleging he “ambushed” her on more than one occasion starting in 2007, kissing her, touching her breast and pressing his genitals against her. On Tuesday, New York State Supreme Court Justice Jennifer Schecter denied the president’s request to throw out the lawsuit or delay it until he leaves office.

"No one is above the law," Schecter wrote in an 18-page decision. “Nothing in the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution even suggests that the president cannot be called to account before a state court for wrongful conduct that bears no relationship to any federal executive responsibility.” 

The ruling could subject Trump to extremely broad questions about this case and similar ones, and he might be forced to testify under oath and provide documents, said Naomi Mezey, a professor at Georgetown Law School and an expert on civil procedure.

Damn! I almost forgot about Zervos.

And if SHE can get Trump to testify under oath, that means that his other accusers might be able to do the same. 

 Remember it only took one intern, with one stained dressed, to get Bill Clinton impeached.

By the time this is over there could be over a dozen women, with a whole closet full of DNA stained clothing to bring to the courtroom.