“That’s a good idea,” I said. “This is too important.”
Back in my office, pacing frantically, I rehearsed what I would say and how Trump would respond. He’d be pissed, I knew, and he’d blame me for the issue coming up again. That was part of the way Trump thought: blame came first, and then the facts, although that’s not really accurate, because the facts were always so distorted that it was impossible to communicate reality to him. Like the fact that he’d actually slept with Daniels: did he even know? Or the fact that it was the result of his behavior in the first place, not that of his personal attorney, and that the best way to avoid this kind of trouble was not to sleep with a porn star who was, by definition, an expert at exchanging sex for money.
The Access Hollywood storm would pass, I figured, and Trump was still packing rallies. His poll numbers dipped, at least temporarily, and a Clinton victory seemed inevitable, but the hurricane of a Stormy Daniels scandal would be ruinous. Needing someone to confide in, I called Pecker.
“I just finished with Keith,” I said. “She wants money in exchange for an NDA. Trump is going to lose it and I will need your help. In half an hour I’ll be in his office, just the two of us, and I’ll suggest we call you.”
“Good idea,” Pecker said. “I hear that ABC is offering Stormy $150,000 for the story.”
“Wait,” I said, incredulous. “What? A hundred and fifty grand? That’s what she’s asking? You have to be kidding. If I was a porn star going to extort a billionaire, I wouldn’t be asking for $150,000. She’s either incredibly desperate, or incredibly stupid.”
Pecker laughed. “You have to think like her,” he said. “That translates into 75,000 lap dances, at two minutes a pop, so she’s saving herself 150,000 minutes shaking her ass.”
“Good point,” I said. “I’m going to call you shortly, so please keep your line green for me.”
Knowing the ballpark figure, I called Keith Davidson again.
“Did you speak with your client and what’s the number?” I asked. “I have a meeting with Mr. Trump in a few minutes and he’s beyond busy, so I need to be quick with giving him the scenario and his options and getting a plan agreed.”
“Yes, I did,” Davidson said. “She wants $250,000 for the NDA.”
“I know that ABC is offering $150,000,” I said. “Why in the world would anyone pay more than that?”
I explained to Davidson that I had her denial, along with press reports of her expressly saying the story was “bullshit.” I had no idea about the veracity of her so-called polygraph; it could be fake, for all I know, I said. Her negotiating position wasn’t strong, I said, so I suggested a nuisance fee of $50,000 to make the whole thing go away once and for all time.
Davidson was getting angry, I could tell, a sign of a hardening of his position, but also an admission that he was trapped and didn’t have any strong cards to play. This kind of anger was very familiar to me: it was frequently my only resort when Trump was trying to screw someone over.
“She’ll never accept that,” he said. “How about $200,000?”
“How about no,” I said, but being careful not to be too declarative. “Whatever number we agree to, it’s ultimately Trump’s decision. However, I would like to go to him with a number, and I’ve got a few minutes to figure this out. I need a number and a solution for him.”
I paused.
“How about $100,000?” I said. “I just doubled my offer.”
Davidson said he’d call me back, after talking to Daniels. He called back in a couple of minutes saying he’d spoken to his client. She wanted to clear $100,000 from the deal, so with Davidson’s fee and the cut for her representative, Gina Rodriguez, that meant a total of $130,000. I had my number, at least and at last, a sum that seemed almost laughably low. Daniels had a presidential candidate with a gun to his head days before the election, so to speak, and that was all she wanted? It reminded me of the movie Austin Powers, where the archvillain Dr. Evil is blackmailing the world and he puts his pinkie to mouth, in imitation of Saturday Night Live’s Lorne Michaels, and names his number for not destroying the planet: “One million dollars.”
Trump’s office was just as chaotic as before, but this time he ordered everyone to leave. I closed the door ceremoniously, something that almost never happened at Trump Org or, later, in the White House. The Boss’s version of an open-office plan was to keep his office door always open. The Secret Service agents assigned to provide his security didn’t like the idea, but grudgingly agreed to wait in the hallway while Trump and I conducted our business.
Alone together, I told Trump that Stormy Daniels was back, demanding payment in return for her silence. He didn’t explode as I expected, perhaps slightly chastened by the Access Hollywood episode and his vulnerable position in the campaign. Another sex scandal would be brutal, it went without saying, so I suggested we call Pecker and get his thoughts. Before we called, I told Trump that I’d tried to convince Pecker to pay Daniels off, as he’d done with McDougal, but that he’d decided that American Media couldn’t justify another outlay in defense of Trump. I didn’t mention that refusing to repay the money for McDougal, as agreed, was hardly the way to endear himself to Pecker, nor did I mention the reputational risk American Media would take if its efforts to suppress Daniels’s story ever emerged. The truth was that Trump was now the author of this further complication in the plot—stiffing American Media meant they weren’t going to come to his financial assistance again.
“It’s not a lot of money for a mega-billionaire,” Pecker told Trump, using flattery as a way of persuasion—a tactic I recognized with a smile. In Trump’s world, flattery gets you everywhere.
“How bad do you think this could hurt me with the campaign?” Trump asked.
“Look, I don’t know the answer, but it can’t be good,” Pecker said.
“Let’s not forget about upstairs,” Trump joked, referring to his Slovenian-born wife, who was, despite all the various hopes and disappointments projected onto her, actually a human being, a wife, and a mother, with all that includes.
“I just don’t pay these kinds of things,” Trump said. “Let me think about it and I’ll let you know what I want to do tomorrow.”
The next morning, I was summoned to the Boss’s office first thing, well before eight and the arrival of the rest of the staff. We were both homebodies and early-to-bed types who preferred a TV remote to the seductions of Manhattan’s boozy nightlife. The fact that I’d never consumed alcohol in my life endeared me to Trump in an unspoken way; he’d watched his older brother drink himself to death at an early age and held drunks in contempt—avoiding alcohol was a major element of his way of life. First thing in the morning was also the only time I could reliably count on his undivided attention and the freedom from prying eyes and ears.
Trump explained to me that he’d been canvassing his friends about what he should do about the Stormy Daniels situation. He was still torn, I could see, but he wanted a resolution of some kind.
“What do you think I should do with this Stormy bullshit?” Trump asked.
He knew that I knew that the Stormy Daniels story wasn’t bullshit, but, like the very first lie he told me the first time we talked—that I’d somehow gotten a great deal on my place at Trump Park Avenue when I’d paid retail like everyone else—I went along with the game. I wasn’t going to call him on this latest clusterfuck, he knew, so he could indulge in a little self-righteous indignation—one of his favorite dishes when he’s forced to confront his own bad behavior or mistakes.
By now, I had an answer ready for Trump. I’d given the matter real thought and realized that there had to be a way to convince Trump to make the payment, without having to admit to himself that he was paying to hide the truth. To counter his illogical proposition, I needed an illogical proposition of my own, one with some truth to it but that fundamentally altered the thinking to paint Trump
as the victim, forced to pay off a lowlife porn star to protect his presidential campaign and good name. The reality was that another scandal, after Pussygrabgate, or whatever you called the Access Hollywood tape scandal, would likely kill Trump. I knew it. He knew it. He was already very likely to lose in a landslide, as he knew perfectly well, but another scandal could turn a loss into a historical embarrassment he would carry for the rest of his life; one more sex revelation and the evangelicals and suburban women he needed to have any chance would completely abandon him, we figured; sleeping with the blonde bombshell porn star of the films Revenge of the Dildos and Big Boob Bonanza wouldn’t help in the swing states.
To guide Trump to a good decision, I trotted out the syllogism I’d cooked up and would rely on in dealing with questions from the press about Stormy Daniels in the months and years ahead. I thought it had a certain charm to it, mostly in its simplicity, but also in the way it inverted the truth and made Trump’s proposed payment not only sensible, but really the only possible response to blackmail—even though her allegations were true. I also knew Trump could use this line on his wife and it would provide her with just enough justification to allow her to turn a blind eye; it was plausible and it was a denial, and I felt sure it would appeal to Trump’s rat-like survival instinct.
“Mr. Trump,” I said, measuring my words carefully, “just because something isn’t true doesn’t mean it can’t hurt you.”
There it was: my years learning at the foot of Donald J. Trump distilled to their essence. The Boss pouted and nodded. I was doing what everyone at Trump Organization was always supposed to do: stick with the narrative. Deny, deny, deny. Accuse, accuse, accuse. Never, ever, ever concede defeat or admit weakness. But with a twist. To get Trump to settle, despite his protestations that he didn’t settle, I’d come up with a way to explain his capitulation in a way that made him look like he was wise, measured, and only doing what was necessary.
“It’s only $130,000,” he sighed finally. “Fuck it, Michael. Go talk to Allen and figure it all out.”
“Sure, Boss,” I said.
Allen Weisselberg’s office was just down the hall, and within a minute we were discussing how to pay Daniels the money in the most discreet and untraceable way possible. It was obvious that he’d been briefed on the matter, so there was no need to explain that background. But there was another matter that loomed over our conversation without being mentioned. In the past, we’d relied on David Pecker and American Media to partner in catch and kill operations, the media mogul providing a very handy way to distance the payment from Trump, as the world now knows. But Trump had cheated Pecker out of the $150,000 paid to Karen McDougal, partly to avoid the possibility of being linked to the payment (which failed) but also out of his personal cheapness. If Trump could screw a law firm, or a paint vendor, or a salesperson, he’d do it almost as a matter of principle. It was like paying taxes: that was only for the little people.
“We need to create a corporation to pay the money to Keith Davidson,” I said. “Also, we need to figure out which Trump entity to use to make the payment.”
“Did the Boss approve payment?” Weisselberg asked.
“Yes, I just left his office,” I replied. “You know what, time is of the essence here, so let’s go speak to him together.”
Back in Trump’s office, we sat quietly, listening to his booming voice on a call on the speaker box. Despite all the promises made to the public that he would recuse himself from running his companies, he never gave an inch of control to his kids. Trump knew he wasn’t going to win, so why take any risk with his businesses in the meantime?
Trump hung up and Allen jumped in, asking him if he’d approved the number of $130,000.
“It’s a lot of money for nothing,” Trump said, continuing the charade. “It never pays to settle these things. But many, many friends have advised me to pay.”
He fell into meditative silence for a beat, a rare occasion for Trump.
“A hundred and thirty thousand is a lot less than I would have to pay Melania,” he said. “If it comes out, I’m not sure how it would play with my supporters. But I’d bet they think it’s cool that I slept with a porn star.”
Finally, he shrugged. “Allen, I approved Michael to do the deal,” he said. “You two figure this out and let me know.”
After I confirmed with Keith Davidson that the number was still on the table, I went to Allen’s office to resolve the details of executing a money transfer. Setting up a company for this purpose would be simple, but this was when I began to see that the deal was going to be more complicated than I’d anticipated.
“Michael, how are we going to make the payment?” Allen asked. “It is possible to run the invoice through one of the golf courses, like Palos Verde, for example. What about selling a Mar-a-Lago membership to someone you know? Or maybe you know someone who’s having an affair that will be willing to pay the sum?”
I swallowed that thought for a moment. Allen was twenty years older than me, and we weren’t particularly close; our relationship was correct and business-like; and he wasn’t part of the banter and joking on the 26th floor. I could see that Alan had never dealt with this kind of sensitive matter personally, as he’d always had Pecker to clean up Trump’s messes. But was he serious, I wondered, prefacing the thought with the f-word in my head, trying to keep my patience.
“Allen, I don’t know anyone who is having an affair at a Trump property, or is interested in purchasing a membership,” I said.
“We definitely don’t want any paper trail leading back to the Boss,” Allen said. “If the Boss pays it and signs the check, it’s like disclosing it to the world. It’s the same if it’s a wire from one of his accounts. It needs to come from a third-party to ensure secrecy.”
“I see your point,” I said.
“Let’s think about this and discuss it in the morning,” Allen said.
Meanwhile, Davidson wasn’t patiently awaiting the payment. He was convinced, correctly, that we were dragging our feet because the election was only a matter of weeks away. If we could play for time, Keith told me, and Trump lost, as the entire universe now agreed was going to happen, including the candidate himself, then the value of Ms. Daniels’s salacious story would go to zero. Texting and calling my cell, Keith was pressing for the deal to close, and I sympathized with his position, but I couldn’t think of a way to resolve the matter and I didn’t want to bother Trump with the issue. He was campaigning furiously, flying to three or four states a day to hold his massive rallies in arenas and stadiums and airplane hangars, the red MAGA hats proliferating in a way that exceeded even my wildest dreams. Trump was going to lose, I figured, but he was going to go down in a blaze of glory.
Davidson emailed a draft of the agreement between David Dennison and Peggy Peterson, two pseudonyms he’d concocted to substitute for Trump and Daniels, another layer of deniability, albeit a flimsy one. I racked my brain trying to think of someone to wire the money for Trump, ruling out the usual suspects like Stewie Rah Rah because of the intense political scrutiny the Boss was under; the stakes were too high to involve an outsider. In truth, Trump lacked intimates and true friends, so he had nowhere to turn in his hour of need, a reality I now see playing out on the nightly news as he gets more and more isolated as president.
To stall, I reviewed and edited the terms of Davidson’s fairly standard Non-Disclosure Agreement, buying another day, then I signed the contract on behalf of the Delaware LLC I’d set up to make the payment, leaving Trump/Dennison’s signature line blank. I insisted on keeping the only copy of the side letter agreement that identified Trump and Daniels as the real people behind the fake names in the NDA, but there was still no money, so I had to slow-walk the deal. I came up with a litany of excuses: first it was travel, then it was Yom Kippur, then I said Trump was impossible to reach in the crush of the campaign, as one deadline passed and then another, but it became
clear that there was really no way to buy time anymore when Davidson sent me an email saying that the deal was now off.
Pecker and the National Enquirer weren’t going to catch and kill the story, but the young Australian journalist Dylan Howard continued to try to broker the deal, acting as a go-between for Davidson and me. Howard trafficked in celebrity gossip, often of the most vicious and destructive variety, but he’d clearly been instructed by his boss Pecker to do his best to protect the Boss. Texts and emails and calls and encrypted conversations were heating up as the election in November loomed, but there was nothing I could do to mollify Howard when he pleaded that it would be a disaster for the National Enquirer if their participation in the effort to silence Daniels was revealed. Pecker had an interest in silence, I realized, but that didn’t solve the problem.
With Daniels by now again talking to reporters to sell her story, I felt sure, I realized the walls were closing in: the story could break at any moment. I finally made my way to Allen’s office.
“What about you?” I asked.
“What about me?” Weisselberg asked.
“Why don’t you advance the payment on behalf of the Boss?” I said.
Weisselberg went as white as a sheet—like he’d seen a ghost. Or been asked to really put his neck on the line for the man he’d supposedly served so loyally.
“I can’t,” he said. “I can’t,” he said again. “You know that I pay for my two grandchildren at Columbia Grammar. That’s one hundred thousand a year. I don’t have the money to pay it.”
This was rich, I knew. He was making an excellent salary with Trump and he’d been working for the company for decades, but when push came to shove he immediately became a spineless wonder. What an asshole, I remember thinking, you’re a millionaire many times over and you can’t come up with a lousy $130,000 for the Boss? Pathetic. But I also knew that there was another factor at work. The mouse wheel in Allen’s head was spinning at a hundred miles an hour. He figured he’d never see the money again—like the Boss stiffing Pecker by welching on the $150,000 for Karen McDougal, Trump would conveniently find a way to ignore the debt and the accountant would have to quietly eat the loss to pay off a porn star, not exactly a story that he’d want his grandchildren to hear as he sat on a rocking chair.
Disloyal Page 27
