A former Playboy model who’s claim of an affair with President Trump in the mid-2000s is playing a central role in the criminal case against him, Karen McDougal, shared on social media a playful bathtub photo aimed squarely at the former president.
Ms. McDougal on Saturday shared a photo showing her legs stretching out in a bathtub with a candle, an oversized glass of red wine, and Ronan Farrow’s “Catch and Kill.”
The book is a reference to the catch and kill scheme disclosed at Mr. Trump’s criminal trial. The former publisher of the National Enquirer, David Pecker, testified that he, Mr. Trump, and the former president’s then fixer, Michael Cohen, hatched a “conspiracy” to keep negative stories about Mr. Trump out of the press.
“I said what I would do is, I would run or publish positive stories about Mr. Trump and I would publish negative stories about his opponents,” Mr. Pecker said at trial.
According to Mr. Pecker, he was to be Mr. Trump’s eyes and ears in the news world and the National Enquirer would also pay sources for exclusive rights to salacious stories about Mr. Trump and never publish them — hence the phrase “catch and kill.”
In the case of Ms. McDougal, the Playmate of the Month for December 1997 and Playmate of the Year for 1998, she says she was paid $150,000 for her story about a 10-month sexual affair she claims to have had with Mr. Trump in 2006 and 2007, when he was newly married to future first lady, Melania Trump, and shortly after the birth of Mr. Trump’s youngest son, Barron.
Mr. Pecker and Ms. McDougal’s then-attorney, Keith Davidson, testified at the trial that the $150,000 payment was cloaked as a deal for her to write a fitness column for one of Mr. Pecker’s publications, and to write about the removal of her breast implants. Neither project ever materialized.
Ms. McDougal has claimed she and Mr. Trump were “in love.”
According to Ms. McDougal, the former president met her at a party at the Playboy Mansion thrown for the contestants of NBC’s “Celebrity Apprentice”, which starred Mr. Trump. She says she wore a translucent dress, to which the former president took a liking.
“He followed me around like a puppy dog, trying to get my attention,” Ms. McDougal told the Daily Mail of the event. “He took to me so much that the Bunny Mother said: ‘Wow, he really has a thing for you.’”
Ms. McDougal added, “I was in love with him. He was in love with me,” saying, “I know that because he told me all the time.”
Mr. Trump denies the affair with Ms. McDougal.
In posting the photo, Mc. McDougal is wading into a territory she doesn’t normally venture into on social media. While some of the characters involved in Mr. Trump’s case, like an adult film actress, Stormy Daniels, and Cohen, have been publicly mocking Mr. Trump in recent weeks, Ms. McDougal has of late been largely silent.
