How a Celebrity Athlete Corroborated Tru mp’s ‘Catch-and-Kill ’ Hush Money Cover-Up

With Roger Sollenberger, Political Reporter

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This week’s Big Dig . . . How a Celebrity Athlete Corroborated Trump’s ‘Catch-and-Kill’ Hush Money Cover-Up

A jury convicted Donald Trump on Thursday on 34 felony counts related to hush money he paid an adult film star to covertly influence the 2016 election.

But the so-called “zombie case” became public information long after the election—in 2018, when Trump’s former “fixer” Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to a campaign finance crime for making the hush money payment.

While the woman, Stormy Daniels, has described in detail the sexual encounter she says she had with Trump in 2006, Trump has never publicly admitted it.

But The Daily Beast has learned that Trump did in fact boast about sex with Daniels at the Nevada golf event where the two met, according to a celebrity athlete who played the tournament.

The athlete’s account also corroborated elements of the case that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg just won against Trump, which centered on the business records Trump falsified to cover up Cohen’s reimbursement.

Ominous Anonymous

The celebrity athlete, who spoke to the Beast on condition of anonymity, citing fear of harassment or retaliation, said that shortly before the 2016 election—around the time Daniels’ hush-money payment was being negotiated—he received multiple calls from people who declined to identify themselves, asking what he remembered from the golf tournament 10 years before.

It was later revealed that in those final critical weeks before the election—amid political fallout from the Access Hollywood video, in which Trump boasted of grabbing women without permission—Trump associates were scrambling to “catch and kill” Daniels’ story, to stop it appearing in the press.

But that was not public information in 2016, and the athlete told The Daily Beast that at the time, he did not fully understand the reason for the calls and did not answer the questions. In hindsight, he acknowledged, the calls seem “ominous.”

The hush-money payments to Daniels gave rise to the 34 felony counts of falsification of business records for which Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, was convicted on Thursday. The historic verdict marks the first time a former president has been found guilty of a crime. He could face a jail sentence, which New York Justice Juan Merchan is slated to decide on July 11, four days before the Republican National Convention.

Sub par

Trump passed up the opportunity to deny sex with Daniels under oath. Daniels testified extensively, in sometimes salacious detail.

But the celebrity athlete who spoke to The Daily Beast said Trump once had looser lips. The athlete said he was close to Trump and Daniels while they socialized at the 2006 American Century Championship celebrity golf tournament, on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe. Trump, the athlete said, boasted repeatedly about having sex with Daniels.

Though Trump sometimes referred to Daniels indirectly as a “porn star,” the athlete said, he emphasized it was understood among golfers who heard the boasts that Trump, at the time best known as the host of the NBC reality TV show “The Apprentice,” was saying he had slept with Daniels.

“It was clear to me and everyone who heard him that he was talking about Stormy,” the athlete said, adding that Trump encouraged other celebs to try to have sex with Daniels, behavior the athlete described as “crass,” “gross,” and “stupid.”

“He’d say all these things like, ‘You’ve gotta bang a porn star, it’s incredible,’ and, ‘It added 20 yards to my drive today,’” the athlete told The Daily Beast.

In “Full Disclosure,” her 2018 memoir, Daniels described what she called “the least impressive sex I’ve ever had.”

The athlete said he had not shared his story widely, and that prosecutors never approached him. His account appears to be the first publicly reported description of Trump telling people he had sex with Daniels around the time Daniels says he did so.

Asked to respond to the athlete’s claims, Trump campaign communications director Steven Cheung falsely blamed the athlete’s decision to come forward on President Joe Biden’s political team.

“The Biden campaign is in freakout mode and will try anything to cling to power,” Cheung said. “Crooked Joe Biden is a failed president trying to distract from his disastrous tenure. Publishing lies, rumors and innuendos are the hallmarks of losing campaigns and desperate failing media outlets trying to stay afloat. It’s time to Make America Great Again and re-elect President Trump.”

No Mulligans

But though the athlete’s account may create personal and political embarrassment for Trump, it’s unclear how much impact it would have had at trial.

Barb McQuade, a former U.S. Attorney and current professor at the University of Michigan School of Law, told The Daily Beast that in terms of the trial, she couldn’t immediately see substantial value in the athlete’s version of events, given the nature of the charges.

“It is a bit of a side issue, really,” McQuade said. “What matters is that business records were falsified within intent to conceal an undisclosed campaign contribution.”

Although Daniels’ allegation of her liaison with Trump was an important plank for Manhattan prosecutors, it wasn’t central to the charges. And Bragg, of course, has now proved that conviction did not require corroboration.

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Protect Ohio Super PACs. The Federal Election Commission last week dismissed a complaint against a pro-JD Vance super PAC, essentially ruling that super PACs and candidates can in fact coordinate, as long as it’s somewhere on the open internet.

The complaint, filed by pro-transparency watchdog Campaign Legal Center, accused the Peter Thiel-backed “Protect Ohio Values” super PAC (POV) of illegally coordinating with the Vance campaign during the 2022 primary through a secret website that POV maintained on blogging platform Medium. The site, which is still up, was kept secret from the public—boasting just 13 followers—and was only revealed in a Politico report the day of the primary.

For months, POV had quietly published hundreds of pages of valuable—and expensive—inside information the super PAC had acquired. The material included internal polls, messaging and strategic assessments, video B-roll, opposition research, and even a draft script that the campaign later adopted for an ad.

Because super PACs can accept unlimited contributions from individuals and corporations, federal law bars them from coordinating with candidates or their campaigns. The CLC complaint argued that POV and Vance coordinated through the secret Medium page via a common vendor—Deep Root Analytics—the intent of which was even stated in a POV memo. But the FEC commissioners ruled against CLC by a vote of 5-1, citing limited resources and “prosecutorial discretion.”

“[G]iven the fact that POV PAC published the information it allegedly intended to provide to the Vance Committee via common engagement of Deep Root Analytics on Medium, and considering the resources that would be needed to further investigate these circumstances, the Commission dismisses as an exercise of prosecutorial discretion,” the legal analysis said.

CLC’s Saurav Ghosh told Business Insider last week the FEC definition of “coordination” was “so narrow and constricted that they’re setting it up so they’re never going to find coordination.”

In the sole dissent, Democratic commissioner and former FEC chair Ellen Weintraub called the case “straightforward,” and took a shot at her colleagues’ claims about available resources. In a footnote, Weintraub noted that the FEC’s independent investigative body is currently working on just three cases.

Keystone to the kingdom. President Biden held another rally in Pennsylvania this week but a pro-Trump super PAC is spending big in the state.

Disclosures filed with the FEC on Thursday show that Make America Great Again Inc. is behind the expenditures—nearly $2.1 million in all, including new anti-Biden TV ads and $24,000 in radio spots attacking the president.

Pennsylvania has been a major focus for both parties. The state has more electoral votes at stake than any other battleground, and polls there have largely found the president trailing Trump by a small margin. Biden’s visit on Wednesday, during which he spoke at a school and focused on pitching his candidacy to Black voters, was his seventh trip to Pennsylvania this year.

The state is also expected to host one of this year’s most competitive Senate races, with Republican businessman David McCormick taking on Sen. Bob Casey. McCormick sailed through the GOP primary this month unopposed. The New York Times reported Thursday that the main super PAC backing McCormick has reserved $30 million in new ads on his behalf.

Royce Rolls. Minnesota GOP senatorial candidate Royce White, who scored the state party’s endorsement this month, spent tens of thousands of dollars in donor funds during his 2022 congressional campaign on what experts told The Daily Beast appeared to be flat-out illegal personal expenses—including a $1,200 night at a Miami strip club a week after White lost the primary.

Pay Dirt has since looked into White’s fundraising during that same primary, and found a number of additional anomalies.

For instance, FEC data shows that the campaign accepted a combined $33,700 from donors who’d already passed the legal limit. That money, which the campaign never refunded, would have bankrupted the committee—White ended the year with just $23,000 on hand. One of those donors, Jeff Kwatinetz, is the co-founder of the “Big3” professional basketball league that White was playing in at the time. Many of White’s campaign expenses appeared to support and outfit the entourage he’d brought along on that tour. Kwatinetz gave White’s campaign $8,700 more than allowed by law.

Another White donor, former Major League Baseball shortstop Andrelton Simmons, gave $100 over the legal limit. But the contribution from Simmons, who hails from Curaçao and plays for the Dutch international team, raises an additional legal question, because it is unclear whether he had acquired permanent resident status in the United States. The prior year, Simmons was reportedly still in the process of getting his green card—if he didn’t complete that step, Simmons would have been barred from making federal campaign donations.

Last weekend, White told a local Minneapolis radio host the campaign had repaid all of the apparently personal expenses. If that’s true, they didn’t report it.

Red alert. A super PAC tied to the Club for Growth is spending big to influence two upcoming contentious Republican primaries—and playing both sides of the Trump coin.

New FEC filings show that Win It Back PAC has recently cut massive checks supporting Rep. Nancy Mace in her hotly-contested South Carolina primary, as well as backing a state legislator in the race for the open at-large House seat in North Dakota.

The group—which is primarily funded by conservative advocacy group Club for Growth, with another roughly $3 million from a pro-Ron DeSantis super PAC—has spent nearly $1.1 million in South Carolina. The buys include TV and radio ads, as well as phone and text messaging supporting Mace while attacking her opponent, Catherine Templeton.

Mace was among Republicans who voted to oust House Speaker Kevin McCarthy last year. She’s since been excoriated by former staffers as some key donors opt to spend against her. However, Win It Back is aligned with one key Mace supporter: Trump, who endorsed her in early March. The primary is scheduled for June 11.

But Win It Back is spending on the opposite side of Trump in North Dakota, which will hold its primary on the same day. The state’s at-large representative, Rep. Kelly Armstrong, has opted to run for governor, inviting a crowd of hopefuls to fight for his open seat. Win it Back has thrown in its lot with former state Rep. Rick Becker, spending $277,000 supporting him and opposing North Dakota Public Service Commissioner Julie Fedorchak, who has Trump’s backing, as well as that of potential vice-presidential candidate Gov. Doug Burgum.

The two have been within a few points in recent public polls, with Becker earning the support of more isolationist politicians like Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.

More From The Beast’s Politics Desk

Over the last several months, indicted Sen. Bob Menendez has spent millions in donor cash on attorneys—and thousands at his old haunt Morton’s Steakhouse. Check out Will Bredderman’s dive into Menendez’s expenses as his bribery trial approaches.

The one man perhaps even more anxious than Trump about the hush money verdict and looming sentence is his lead defense attorney, Todd Blanche. Justin Rohrlich spoke to some of Trump’s former lawyers about the unenviable fate potentially awaiting Blanche—read what they predicted here.

Facing half a billion dollars in legal judgments, Trump offloaded one of his private jets this month—and the buyer is a Republican megadonor who poured nearly $250,000 into a political committee tied to Trump’s 2020 campaign. If you missed it over the long weekend, check out my scoop with Noah Kirsch.

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