Piecing Together The Weekend Trump Met Stormy Daniels

What happened in Tahoe in July of 2006?

stormy daniels and donald trump
Donald Trump during American Century Celebrity Golf Championship - July 16, 2006 at Edgewood Tahoe Golf Course in Lake Tahoe, California, United States. (Michael Bezjian/WireImage)
WireImage

In July 2006, Donald Trump was a 60-year-old real estate developer, who headed to Lake Tahoe for the annual American Country Celebrity Golf Championship. His show, The Apprentice had steadily transformed his image from that of a tabloid casino owner to a savvy, commanding businessman, and he had adoring fans who followed him as he made his way across the course. GQ writes that over this four day weekend, if allegations are correct, Trump met a collection of adult actresses, sent as emissaries from the porn studio Wicked Pictures. According to one of the porn stars in attendance, Stormy Daniels, Trump stole more looks at her than anyone else, and they ended up riding together in the same golf cart. Daniels claims that the two began an affair that weekend, an alleged months-long relationship that Trump — who at the time was newly married to Melania, who had just had his child — has denied. In recent weeks, this relationship has come out, and new questions have emerged about the $130,000 payout that Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, made to Daniels in 2016, and about whether the transaction amounted to an illegal contribution to Trump’s presidential campaign. Daniels signed a secrecy agreement at the time of the payout, but is now suing for the right to speak freely. Another porn star Trump met at that Lake Tahoe weekend came forward with allegations in 2016 that Trump kissed her and two friends without permission that weekend. And yet another woman, a Playboy actress named Karen McDougal, alleges she had a secret affair with Trump will in Tahoe that weekend. McDougal also signed a secrecy agreement, but has filed a lawsuit of her own, suing for the right to speak. GQ writes that the weekend at Lake Tahoe is actually a story of a “lonely Trump racked by private malaise, stumbling into a three-quarter-life crisis that years later he would seek to resolve with a run for the White House.”

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