Former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who claims she had a sexual relationship with President Trump from 2006 to 2007, said Trump attempted to pay her after the two had been “intimate.”
“After we had been intimate, he tried to pay me, and I actually didn’t know how to take that,” McDougal told CNN anchor Anderson Cooper in an interview that aired Thursday evening. “I looked at him and said, ‘That’s not me. I’m not that kind of girl.’ And he said, ‘Oh,’ and he said, ‘You’re really special.’”
McDougal answered affirmatively when asked if Trump tried to hand her money.
“I don’t even know how to describe the look on my face,” she said. “It must have been so sad.”
She added: “It hurt me that he saw me in that light.”
The comments come two days after McDougal sued American Media Inc., the National Enquirer’s parent company, to be released from a 2016 legal agreement that forces her to not speak of the relationship.
American Media Inc. paid her $150,000 for exclusive rights to the story but it was never published.
The lawsuit filed earlier this weeks asserts that Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, was covertly involved and led her astray in the arrangement.
“The lawsuit filed today aims to restore her right to her own voice,” McDougal’s lawyer Peter Stris said. “We intend to invalidate the so-called contract that American Media Inc. imposed on Karen so she can move forward with the private life she deserves.”
Meanwhile, American Media Inc. told CNN that McDougal “has been free to respond to press inquiries about her relationship with President Trump since 2016.”
The White House has previously said Trump has refuted the affair occurred.
McDougal’s lawsuit comes after former adult film star Stormy Daniels filed a lawsuit against Trump that claims the nondisclosure agreement she signed should be nullified because Trump didn’t sign it.
Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, has an interview that will air on CBS’s “60 Minutes” on Sunday.
