Trump is again trying to pay Stormy Daniels hush money: MSNBC's Rachel Maddow
New reporting from MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow revealed that Donald Trump is once again attempting to keep Stormy Daniels silent before an election – despite the former president awaiting sentencing on 34 felony charges related to hush money payments before the 2016 election.
“We have just learned, we have reported out – 20 days before this election – we can report that he is once again trying to pay Stormy Daniels to be quiet,” Maddow said Wednesday night as part of a breaking news “special report.”
Maddow, who said she was “a little bit bewildered by it, as well as a little bit shocked” by the bombshell reporting noted that Trump was convicted earlier this year for making hush money payments to Daniels 11 days before the 2016 election.
The MSNBC host said the new information was discovered after Daniels’ appearance on her show, “The Rachel Maddow Show,” when a GoFundMe page setup by Daniels raised enough money to pay off hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees for Trump-related cases that she was still on the hook for.
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Maddow said it was during Daniels' negotiations to settle the amount of money she would owe Trump that his attorneys tried again to make a deal.
“They want to cut some sort of deal where they silence you,” Daniels’ attorney is heard telling the porn actress in a video recorded by Daniels.
“In the midst of this negotiation over paying off the last legal settlement between them, Trump is trying to get another hush money deal with Stormy Daniels ahead of this election,” Maddow said. “Trump’s lawyer basically offered to take it off the bottom line. They would pretend that Stormy Daniels owed less money to Trump than they actually believed she owed if she also signed an agreement to not talk about Trump.”
“When he paid her $130,000 in hush money before the 2016 election, that turned into 34 felony convictions for Trump because a jury found he illegally laundered those payments through his business to cover it up,” she said.
According to Maddow, a recorded phone call and legal documents now show “they were apparently planning to launder the new hush money payment to Stormy Daniels through the payment of a legal judgment.”