Our biographies of Stormy Daniels and of Michael Cohen are now live on Who2.
Their connection is bizarre, seedy and deservedly huge news. Stormy Daniels is the adult film actress who says she had an affair with President Donald Trump in 2006 after meeting him at a Lake Tahoe golf tournament in 2006, a year after his marriage to Melania Trump and not long after the birth of their child, Barron.
Michael Cohen is the personal lawyer and self-described “fixer” for Donald Trump who made a payment of $130,000 to Stormy Daniels a month before the elections of 2016 — apparently “hush money” for keep her from talking about the alleged affair. The payment was revealed in a Wall Street Journal story this January.
President Trump won the election in 2016, but now says that he didn’t have an affair with Daniels and knew nothing about the payment. The payments came from Cohen’s personal account, it seems — but how or why he would be sending payments to Stormy Daniels without consulting with Donald Trump is unclear.
And yesterday, of course, it came out in court that Trump supporter and Fox News host Sean Hannity has also been a hidden client of Michael Cohen. And Daniels says she wants to give the money back and speak freely about the whole thing.
Wikipedia has a timeline on the scandal, and The Guardian has excellent news story archives. But first, start with our biographies of Stormy Daniels and of Michael Cohen.