Trump Affair Allegations: Hush Money, Conviction, and Carroll Case

The Trump affair allegations center on two women — adult film performer Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal — whose accounts of sexual encounters with Donald Trump were bought and buried before the 2016 election, a scheme that eventually produced a 34-count felony conviction in 2024. A separate matter, writer E. Jean Carroll’s claim of a 1990s sexual assault, is often grouped with the affair stories but is legally distinct and has produced civil judgments totaling more than $88 million. Trump has denied every allegation.

Stormy Daniels and the $130,000 Payment

Stormy Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, said she had a consensual sexual encounter with Trump in July 2006 at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe, Nevada.¹ Trump was married to Melania Trump at the time; their son Barron had been born the previous year. Daniels laid out her account publicly in a March 2018 60 Minutes interview with Anderson Cooper, describing the meeting at the tournament, going to Trump’s hotel suite, and having sex. She also said a man approached her in a Las Vegas parking lot around 2011 and threatened her to stay quiet.² Trump has denied a sexual relationship with her.

Her story might have stayed private. Then, on October 7, 2016, the Washington Post published the “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump made vulgar remarks about women, and endorsements began peeling away. Within a day, a representative for Daniels contacted the National Enquirer to say she was ready to go public.³ Prosecutors would later argue the tape “served as the catalyst” for what happened next.⁴

Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen negotiated a $130,000 payment for Daniels’s silence. On October 17, 2016, Cohen incorporated a Delaware shell company called Essential Consultants LLC. He moved $131,000 into its account from a home equity line of credit on October 26 and wired $130,000 to Daniels’s attorney Keith Davidson the following day.⁵ On October 28, Daniels signed a “Confidential Settlement Agreement” that used pseudonyms — “DD” for Trump, “PP” for Clifford, “EC” for Essential Consulting. Trump himself never signed it.⁶

Daniels sued in March 2018 to void the agreement on the grounds that Trump’s missing signature made it invalid and that it was unenforceable on public policy grounds.⁶ By September 2018, Trump’s lawyers filed court papers stating they would not contest her claim or try to enforce the NDA.⁷

Karen McDougal and Catch-and-Kill

Karen McDougal, a former Playboy Playmate, described a roughly ten-month relationship with Trump that began in June 2006 after a meeting at the Playboy Mansion and ended in April 2007. She said meetings often took place at a private bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel, and that Trump asked her to book her own travel for reimbursement to avoid a paper trail. A White House spokesperson denied the relationship, calling it “just more fake news.”⁸

Her story was buried through a tabloid practice called “catch and kill.” In August 2016, McDougal signed a deal with American Media, Inc. (AMI), parent of the National Enquirer, giving the company exclusive rights to her story for $150,000. AMI CEO David Pecker later testified the company never intended to publish it and bought it because publication would have been “very embarrassing” to Trump and his campaign.⁹ The arrangement traced back to an August 2015 meeting at Trump Tower where Pecker, Trump, and Cohen agreed Pecker would act as the campaign’s “eyes and ears” for negative stories.¹⁰ AMI also paid $30,000 to a Trump Tower doorman for a story, later found untrue, that Trump had fathered a child with a housekeeper.¹¹

In September 2018, AMI signed a non-prosecution agreement with federal prosecutors, admitting the McDougal payment was made to suppress her story and influence the election, and that it knew such coordinated expenditures were unlawful.¹¹ In 2021, AMI paid a $187,500 civil penalty to the Federal Election Commission and agreed not to contest that the payment was a prohibited in-kind campaign contribution.¹² McDougal later sued AMI and regained the rights to her story.⁹

How the Payments Became a Crime

The criminal case against Trump was not about the payment to Daniels. It was about how Cohen was paid back for it. In January 2017, Cohen sought $180,035 in reimbursement from the Trump Organization: the $130,000, a wiring fee, and $50,000 for tech services. Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg doubled the amount to cover Cohen’s taxes and added a $60,000 bonus, bringing the total to $420,000, paid out in $35,000 monthly installments across 2017.⁵¹³

Each installment generated an invoice, a voucher, and a check, and each was recorded in the Trump Organization’s books as payment for legal services under a retainer agreement. Cohen testified that no such retainer existed and that the invoices were for legal work he never performed.¹⁴ The prosecution built its case around 34 specific documents — 11 invoices, 12 vouchers, and 11 checks — it said were fraudulently labeled.¹⁵ Trump publicly described the payments as a legitimate monthly retainer.¹⁶

The 2024 Conviction

A Manhattan grand jury indicted Trump in March 2023 on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, and he pleaded not guilty at his arraignment on April 4, 2023.⁴ The trial began in April 2024 and ran roughly five weeks with 22 witnesses.¹⁷ Pecker testified about the Trump Tower meeting and the catch-and-kill arrangement, Cohen testified that Trump personally approved the Daniels payment and told him to “just pay it,” and Daniels described the 2006 encounter and said the “Access Hollywood” tape prompted her to come forward.¹⁴ Trump did not testify.

On May 30, 2024, the jury found Trump guilty on all 34 counts, making him the first current or former U.S. president convicted of a felony. After his November 2024 election victory, Judge Juan Merchan rejected Trump’s arguments that the Supreme Court’s July 2024 presidential immunity ruling required tossing the conviction, finding the ruling did not reach the falsification of personal business records.¹⁸ On January 9, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court, 5–4, declined to block sentencing, calling the burden on the president-elect “relatively insubstantial.”¹⁹

On January 10, 2025, Judge Merchan sentenced Trump to an unconditional discharge on all 34 counts. That carries no prison time, no fine, and no probation, but the felony conviction remains on his record. Merchan said the sentence was designed to let the incoming president serve “unencumbered by pending court proceedings.”²⁰²¹

Trump filed a 96-page appeal on October 27, 2025, raising five main challenges: that federal election law preempts the state charges; that the trial improperly admitted evidence of official presidential acts; that the jury was not required to agree unanimously on the unlawful means underlying the felony; that prosecutors failed to prove intent to defraud; and that Judge Merchan should have recused himself.²²²³²⁴²⁵

The Federal Election Commission separately considered whether the payments broke campaign finance law but deadlocked. Its Office of General Counsel had recommended finding reason to believe Cohen, the Trump Organization, Trump, and the campaign made and accepted illegal contributions, since the $130,000 payment was made to influence the election and far exceeded the $2,700 individual limit for 2016.²⁶ Neither the motion to investigate nor the motion to dismiss reached the four votes required, and the FEC closed its files.²⁷

E. Jean Carroll: A Separate Matter

Writer and advice columnist E. Jean Carroll’s lawsuits are often folded into coverage of Trump’s affair allegations but involve a different type of claim: sexual assault, not a consensual relationship. Carroll accused Trump of assaulting her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid-1990s. He denied it, publicly attacked her credibility, and she sued.

In May 2023, a New York jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll — concluding the conduct did not meet New York’s legal definition of rape — and for defaming her when he denied the incident after leaving office, awarding $5 million in damages.²⁸ A second trial, over defamatory statements Trump made while president in 2019, produced an $83.3 million verdict in January 2024, including $65 million in punitive damages.²⁹

The Second Circuit affirmed the $5 million judgment in 2025 and the $83.3 million judgment in September 2025, calling the damages “fair and reasonable” and the reprehensibility of Trump’s conduct “perhaps unprecedented.”²⁸ Trump petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to review the $5 million case in November 2025; the petition has been distributed for conference but not acted on as of mid-2026.³⁰ His lawyers have said they plan a separate Supreme Court petition on the $83.3 million judgment but had not filed one as of June 2026.³¹ The amount owed continues to accrue interest at 9% annually.

Other Accusers

Beyond Daniels, McDougal, and Carroll, at least 26 women have publicly accused Trump of sexual misconduct ranging from harassment and unwanted kissing to groping and assault, with alleged incidents spanning from the 1970s through the 2010s.³² Among them are Jessica Leeds, who said Trump groped her on a first-class flight in the late 1970s or early 1980s; Jill Harth, who sued Trump for sexual harassment in 1997; and Summer Zervos, a former Apprentice contestant who settled a defamation suit against Trump in 2021 without compensation. Multiple former Miss USA and Miss Teen USA contestants have alleged Trump walked into dressing rooms while they were undressed.³³ Trump has denied all of them, calling the accounts fabricated and politically motivated.

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