Anderson Cooper asked Ronan Farrow how important he thinks Karen McDougal’s story is to Trump’s Manhattan trial.
“So the larger picture it’s pivotal and it’s a pivotal moment in this case that Judge Merchan is saying, look, this is essential material to establishing the narrative. the narrative being that there was indeed a scheme between donald trump and the national enquirer, and that these payments had an electoral intent,” Farrow said.
“And the evidence of a series of payments, not just a Stormy Daniels, which is the central transaction at issue, but also to Karen McDougal, who you mentioned, potentially to the doorman at Trump Tower, who has paid off for exclusive rights to a rumor he’d heard about that Trump had an affair and fathered a child with an employee.
“We don’t know whether that rumor is accurate, but we do know that there was a payment from the National Enquirer in order to lock up that doorman and silence all of that has figured in legal documents around this case and the fact that it’s now going to figure in front of jurors is significant. It’s the crux of it.”
After showing a clip of his own interview with McDougal, Cooper asked if he thought the judge would allow her testimony into the trial.
“it was let in theoretically, but the judge also made a hedging comment saying, we don’t know whether the probative value of that would outweigh the potential prejudicial effect of it. So we’ll see what we do know from both of our interactions with Karen McDougal and the way she’s behaved with other journalists is she’s been willing to turn whistleblower on this matter.
“She expressed to me multiple times in our interviews that she felt a sense of guilt about having been dragged into a scheme with electoral implications, which wasn’t her intention in the first place.So we have a sense that she’s going to be willing to help the prosecution in this case,” Cooper said.
