House Democrats plan to launch an investigation into the hush money payoffs made by Donald Trump—albeit through two intermediaries—shortly before the 2016 presidential election to AVN Hall of Famer Stormy Daniels and two-time Playboy centerfold model Karen McDougal, according to a Washington Post report published on Tuesday.
Daniels says that she had a single sexual encounter with Trump in 2006, as AVN.com has reported, and McDougal claims that she took part in a months-long affair with Trump around the same time period—about a year after Trump married his third wife, the former Melania Knauss, and just months after she gave birth to their son—which involved multiple episodes of sexual intercourse.
Daniels was paid $130,000 by Trump’s then-lawyer and “fixer’ Michael Cohen, a payment ruled by prosecutors to be a felony campaign finance violation and for which Cohen is now serving a three-year jail term. Trump, a court found, directed the payoff process “nearly every step” of the way, as AVN.com reported.
But due to a Justice Department policy against issuing indictments of still-serving presidents, Trump was not indicted for the campaign finance felony. House Democrats now intend to continue the investigation that federal prosecutors could not complete, holding public hearings into the payoffs, according to NBC News.
But would Daniels testify under oath at those hearings? Taking to her Twitter account on Tuesday, she appeared to confirm that if called, she would testify.
“I have no fear of being under oath because I have been and will be honest,” Daniels wrote. “Bring it!”
“Based on what we know right now … as well as my decade of experience as a prosecutor in the Southern District if New York, I believe there is sufficient evidence to charge Donald Trump,” former federal prosecutor Daniel Goldman told NBC News.
Of course, congressional committees are not empowered to issue criminal indictments, but with more than 130 members of the House now saying that they support Trump’s impeachment, the Daniels hearings could result in that total going up.
Photo By Adam Bielawski / Wikimedia Commons
