This has no relevance to the trial, which has now gone to the jury, but it’s relevant to anyone who has questions about whether it happened:
The celebrity athlete, who spoke to The Daily Beast on condition of anonymity, citing fear of harassment or retaliation, said he was close to Trump and Daniels while they socialized at the 2006 American Century Championship celebrity golf tournament on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe.
Though Trump sometimes referred to Daniels indirectly as a “porn star,” the athlete said, he emphasized that it was understood among the golfers who heard the boasts that Trump, at the time best known as the host of reality TV show The Apprentice, was saying he had slept with Daniels.
“It was clear to me and everyone who heard him that he was talking about Stormy,” the athlete said, adding that Trump encouraged other celebs to try to have sex with Daniels, behavior the athlete described as “crass,” “gross,” and “stupid.”
“He’d say all these things like, ‘You’ve gotta bang a porn star, it’s incredible,’ and, ‘It added 20 yards to my drive today,’” the athlete told The Daily Beast.
That sure sounds like him…
And this also sounds right:
According to the athlete, shortly before the 2016 election, around the time Daniels’ hush-money payment was being negotiated, he received multiple calls from people who declined to identify themselves, asking what he remembered from the golf event 10 years before.
It was later revealed that in those final critical weeks before the election—amid political fallout from the Access Hollywood video, in which Trump boasted of grabbing women without permission—Trump associates were scrambling to “catch and kill” Daniels’ story, to stop it appearing in the press.
But that was not public information in 2016, and the athlete told The Daily Beast that at the time that he did not fully understand the reason for the calls, and did not answer the questions. In hindsight, he acknowledged, the calls seem “ominous.”
I would have thought this was Michael Cohen, but I think he would have mentioned it. So maybe Keith Schiller? Some GOP operative? Who knows? But Trump bragging about “banging a porn star” and sending some thug to find out what the guys to whom he bragged about it remembered is patented Trump.
The article, which is worth reading for even more details, includes this:
The athlete who spoke to The Daily Beast called Trump a “cheat,” claiming to have witnessed Trump kicking his own ball and clearing obstacles—“like these giant Tahoe pine cones the size of a baby’s head”—from his lie, in violation of the rules. He also said Trump left trails in sandtraps that clearly showed he had moved his ball, and falsely lowered his score.
Tournament officials learned of the cheating allegations, the athlete said, but it was unclear whether anything came of them.
Yep. Totally believe it.