RNC official who hired Trump lawyer Michael Cohen for Playboy settlement resigns
The Republican National Committee (RNC) deputy finance chair, Elliott Broidy, resigned from his position Friday after news broke that he hired President Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, to negotiate a settlement with a Playboy model in 2016.
"I acknowledge I had a consensual relationship with a Playboy Playmate," Broidy said in a statement. "At the end of our relationship, this woman shared with me that she was pregnant. She alone decided that she did not want to continue with the pregnancy and I offered to help her financially during this difficult period."
As with the deal Cohen made to buy the silence of adult film star Stormy Daniels about her alleged affair with President Trump, the Broidy settlement uses alliterative pseudonyms for the parties involved. And the women in each case share a lawyer: One Keith M. Davidson represented both Daniels and the Playboy model in the Broidy agreement in their dealings with Cohen.
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Broidy, who is married, resigned after his $1.6 million deal came to light. This story comes as Friday court filings revealed Cohen is under criminal investigation.
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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