Michael Cohen, the former lawyer for President Trump, planned to use a shell company he created months before the 2016 election to buy the rights to a Playboy model’s story alleging an affair with Trump, a report on Wednesday said.
Cohen, Trump’s longtime fixer, created Resolution Consultants LLC in Delaware on Sept. 30, 2016, to purchase the rights to Karen McDougal’s story, which the owner of the National Enquirer had bought a month earlier, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The newspaper reported in January that Cohen created Resolution Consultants and then dissolved it on Oct. 17, 2016, the same day he created Essential Consultants LLC, but never connected it to McDougal.
He used Essential Consultants as a vehicle to pay $130,000 to former porn star Stormy Daniels to secure her silence about a sexual affair she alleges she had with Trump a decade earlier, the newspaper said.
Cohen recorded a conversation he had with then-candidate Trump in September 2016 discussing creating a company to buy McDougal’s story from American Media Inc., the parent company of the National Enquirer, for $150,000.
The taped discussion was aired by CNN on Tuesday evening.
AMI, headed by Trump ally David Pecker, paid McDougal $150,000 for her story but then declined to punish it — a tactic known as “catch and kill.”
Cohen and Trump never followed through on the purchase, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The audio recording was among material seized when the FBI raided Cohen’s office, home and hotel room in April looking for information about the payment to Daniels.
Cohen is under investigation by federal prosecutors in Manhattan for bank fraud, wire fraud and campaign finance violations, but has not been charged.
Trump has denied affairs with Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, and McDougal.




