Michael Cohen explains to Vanity Fair exactly how the Stormy Daniels payment came to be

President Trump's longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen told his side of the Stormy Daniels story in a Vanity Fair interview published Monday, describing the negotiations that led to the now-infamous $130,000 payment to the adult film actress.

Cohen told Vanity Fair that until 2011, he didn't know that Trump had ever met Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford. But when a website published an interview about the alleged affair between Trump and the porn star, Cohen says, Daniels' former attorney, Keith Davidson, called him to work on getting the story removed.

When Trump's presidential campaign placed new scrutiny on rumors of the alleged affair in 2016, Cohen called Davidson to get ahead of newfound media interest. Cohen asked Davidson how much it would cost to "own the story" and keep Daniels from talking to media outlets that were sniffing around the scandal. Davidson told Cohen that Daniels wanted $130,000, a number that Cohen says he found strange in its apparent randomness.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Cohen says that when he asked Davidson why Daniels would talk to media outlets in 2016, when she had denied reports of the affair half a decade ago, the answer was that "she needed the money." Davidson declined to comment to Vanity Fair on the matter.

Trump has consistently denied that he was ever sexually involved with Daniels. Read Cohen's entire interview — in which he also discusses an impromptu meeting he had with Daniels' current lawyer, Michael Avenatti — at Vanity Fair.