Karen McDougal, the former Playboy Playmate who claims to have had a 10-month-long affair is Donald Trump, has settled her lawsuit and is now free to discuss the relationship publicly.
McDougal was locked in a legal battle with the company that owns the National Enquirer, American Media Inc. The outlet had purchased the exclusive rights to her story in August of 2016 for $150,000. However, they never ran the story anywhere, leaving McDougal in limbo with her story about the man who is now President of the United States.
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The settlement “restores to me the rights to my life story and frees me from this contract that I was misled into signing nearly two years ago,” McDougal said in a statement on Wednesday, according to the Associated Press.
McDougal filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles last month, seeking to have the contract invalidated. In court documents, McDougal claimed that President Trump’s infamous attorney Michael Cohen had secretly taken part in her discussions with American Media Inc.
Cohen has been in headlines recently for helping President Trump cover up another alleged affair with adult film mogul Stormy Daniels. Last week, federal agents raided Cohen’s home, office and hotel room, seizing numerous documents through a legitimate search warrant.
Multiple sources close to the investigations say that some of the documents the agents were looking for had to do with Cohen’s payment to Stormy Daniels, which came dangerously close to the presidential election and may have violated campaign finance laws.
Under her new settlement, McDougal gets to keep the $150,000 she was originally paid by AMI. She is also entitled up as much as $75,000 more in future profits the outlet may make from her story about the affiar. However, AMI will retain the rights to any photographs of McDougal that it already has under the agreement.
“My goal from the beginning was to restore my rights and not to achieve any financial gain, and this settlement does exactly that,” McDougal said. “I am relieved to be able to tell the truth about my story when asked, and I look forward to being able to return to my private life and focus on what matters to me.”
In March, McDougal spoke about the affair in an interview with Anderson Cooper on CNN. She recalled that President Trump tried to pay her after their first sexual encounter in the Beverly Hills Hotel in 2006.
She also publicly apologized to first lady Melania Trump. Like Trump’s alleged affair with Daniels, his alleged relationship with McDougal took place just one year after he had married Melania, and only a few short months after the birth of his youngest son, Barron Trump.
