Karen McDougal, the Playboy model linked to Trump's criminal case

Legal problems have multiplied for Donald Trump in the district of Manhattan. In fact, there are 34 counts of falsifying business records against the former president. One of these counts involves an unnamed woman who allegedly received hush money from the mogul. She is widely assumed to be Karen McDougal, a former P l a y b o y model.

Karen McDougal says that, between 2006 and 2007, she had an extramarital affair with Donald Trump.

As reported by The Wall Street Journal, Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg has investigated whether McDougal received the same kind of hush payment as Stormy Daniels, to keep quiet about the affair during the presidential campaign of Donald Trump in 2016.

The Manhattan Grand Jury, the same one that voted to indict Donald Trump for bribing Stormy Daniels, heard the testimony of two witnesses who offered information about the Karen McDougal case.

Based on the similarities of both cases, everything indicates that the Karen McDougal case will take a path similar to that involving Stormy Daniels. Of course, it remains to be seen how Trump will be judged in court for both missteps.

The investigations indicate that Stormy Daniels (image) would have been paid $130,000 for her silence, while Karen McDougal would have raised that figure to $150,000.

As The Wall Street Journal points out, Karen McDougal, Play*mate of the Year 1998, would have reached an agreement to sell the exclusive story of her adventure with Donald Trump to The National Enquirer.

The figure The Wall Street Journal and other media indicate is $150,000. McDougal (center) would have made the agreement in 2016, during the electoral campaign that ended up taking Donald Trump to the White House.

However, The National Enquirer never published her story, despite having paid McDougal for it.

The Wall Street Journal points out that Donald Trump and the parent company of The National Enquirer, American Media Inc. (AMI), reached an agreement so that the information would never see the light.

It's likely that things went that route, because the former president of AMI was a personal friend of Donald Trump.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the alleged bribery of Karen McDougal was already investigated in 2018. Her story circulated and was allegedly checked by authorities at the time of the first revelations by Stormy Daniels in 2018.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the matter did not reach the courts at the time because AMI cooperated with the Prosecutor's Office. The media company admitted to the payment of $ 150,000 to the model in collaboration with members of Donald Trump's electoral campaign.

The objective of the payment was obvious: to prevent Trump's adventure from seeing the light. It might have affected the electoral campaign and the final result of the presidential elections.

A salient detail is that at the time of Trump's adventures with Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, his wife Melania had just given birth to their son Barron. The affairs ended around the time the infant was one and a half years old.

Public knowledge of his affairs with two adult models around the time of his youngest son's birth could have been very bad for his polling numbers at election time. For that reason, both models were paid hush money.

In the image: Stormy Daniels

The investigations of 2018 would not reach Donald Trump, then the president. His lawyer, Michael Cohen, would plead guilty to the facts, which led him to prison in 2019.

It seems, however, that his time in jail changed Michael Cohen's mind. He is now one of Alvin Bragg's main informants and witnesses in the case against Donald Trump.

Cohen told CBS that he is not doing this for vengeance against his former client, Trump, but that he just wants the right person to be held accountable for the incidents.

Image: Karen McDougal, right, with her colleague Nikkie Ziering.

"I've never said that it was about me," he told interviewer Robert Costa. "This is solely about accountability. I should not be held accountable for Donald Trump's dirty deeds."

In the image: Stormy Daniels