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During the final days of the presidential election, Donald Trump’s alleged affair with a porn star named Stormy Daniels probably didn’t seem like the most pressing story.

And these days, the reported affair wouldn’t seem as consequential as other issues related to Trump’s controversial presidency — were it not for new reports coming out in the past week alleging that he tried to buy the porn star’s silence for $130,000.

But there’s yet another reason that Trump’s relationship with the actress, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, could take on new relevance. And it’s connected to the investigation into Russia’s attempts to meddle in the 2016 election, according to Jacob Weisberg, the editor-in-chief of the Slate Group.

On Tuesday, Weisberg published a story on the Slate website about multiple interviews he had with Clifford before the 2016 election, in which she detailed a year-long affair with Trump that started at a Lake Tahoe golf tournament in July 2006. She also told Weisberg about the Trump team offering to pay her in the six figures to buy her silence.

To Weisberg, the revelations that Trump had allegedly been unfaithful to his wife Melania Trump and consorted with women who work in sex-related industries could make him vulnerable to extortion and blackmail.

“At the end of the campaign, it didn’t seem, in the context of what was going on, that (an affair with a porn star) was a Top 10 liability for him,” Weisberg said on his Slate Trumpcast podcast. “But you know in the context of the Russia story and the Steele dossier, some of this takes on a slightly different light.”

Weisberg is referring to the dossier that was compiled by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele as part of opposition research on Trump.

Steele was charged with finding out what he could about Trump’s connections to the Russian government, Vox said. His dossier contains a number of serious charges against Trump, most infamously that Trump employed prostitutes during a trip to Moscow in 2013.

The dossier said that Trump reportedly asked the prostitutes to urinate on a hotel bed once slept on by President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama. Moreover, Russia’s FSB security agency was said to be in possession of a videotape of the incident — the so-called “pee tape” — which could give the Russian government leverage over Trump, according to Vox.

News organizations haven’t been able to verify the hotel room incident or the existence of the “pee tape,” and the story has generally been relegated to the realm of late-night TV show jokes. On Trumpcast, Weisberg didn’t suggest that Trump’s alleged affair with Clifford or his reported encounters with other porn stars that 2006 weekend prove there was a Moscow hotel incident.

But it shows that Trump was capable of the kind of behavior alleged in the dossier, he said.

“When the dossier first came out, one of the claims from Trump and his people is that this story about him consorting with prostitutes at the Ritz-Carlton (in Moscow) was ridiculous because Trump didn’t do that kind of stuff,” Weisberg said.

But with regard to the porn star allegations, Weisberg said, “We’re up to four people who’ve had involvement in the porn industry who have alleged relationships with him.”

With Clifford, Trump pursued a threesome, according to recent reports, which also say he also pursued hookups with several other porn stars that weekend.

Wicked Pictures, an adult-film studio, sent several of its stars to schmooze with celebrities participating in the annual American Century Celebrity Golf Championship. One of the other porn stars was Jessica Drake. Just before the 2016 election, Drake came forward as one of nearly two dozen women to accuse Trump of sexual misconduct.

During a news conference, she said Trump invited her to come to his hotel room. She said she brought along two other women and a pajama-clad Trump grabbed each of them tightly and kissed “each one of us without permission.” She said Trump also asked each about their personal relationships before they left. She said he later called her and proposed paying her $10,000 to have sex.

Another porn star in Lake Tahoe that weekend was Alana Evans, a friend of Clifford’s. She told the Daily Beast that Clifford told her about meeting Donald Trump, who was then the star of NBC’s “The Apprentice.” Later that night, Clifford called her, said she was with Trump and tried to get her to join them for a “party,” Evans told both the Daily Beast and Megyn Kelly in a TV interview on Tuesday.

Evans told the Daily Beast: “Stormy calls me four or five times, by the last two phone calls she’s with Donald (Trump) and I can hear him, and he’s talking through the phone to me saying, ‘Oh come on, Alana, let’s have some fun! Let’s have some fun! Come to the party, we’re waiting for you.’ ”

The next day, Evans said, Clifford told her a little bit about her evening with Trump. “She tells me, ‘All I’m going to say is: I ended up with Donald in his hotel room. Picture him chasing me around his hotel room in his tighty-whities.’ ”

Weisberg wrote that he got the tip about Clifford and her supposed affair with Trump just after the Republican National Convention in 2016.

Weisberg said he doesn’t usually pursue such stories and didn’t see the main concern as Trump possibly having an affair, which he was able to corroborate through interviews with several of Clifford’s friends.

“I didn’t think an extramarital affair would be a highly significant story,” he wrote. “What interested me more was Daniels’ allegation that Trump had negotiated to buy her silence.”

Clifford told Weisberg that she was sharing details with him because Trump was stalling on paying her. She appeared to also be angry “about Trump’s newfound opposition to abortion and gay marriage.” But, he added, she hoped that Slate or another publication would pay her for her story, which Weisberg said Slate doesn’t do.

Then, a week before the election, Clifford stopped responding to calls and text messages, Weisberg said. He heard from a friend of Clifford’s that she had taken the money from Trump. Weisberg said he considered publishing a story, but he said he had been unable to nail down what to him was the most important aspect of the story: Evidence that she had been paid for her silence.

The Wall Street Journal was able to nail down that aspect of the story in its report that it published on Friday, Weisberg said.

Through his attorney Michael Cohen, Trump has denied an affair, and so has Clifford.

“These rumors have circulated time and again since 2011,” Cohen said in a statement to The New York Times. “President Trump once again vehemently denies any such occurrence as has Ms. Daniels.”

On Trumpcast, Weisberg agreed with co-host Virginia Heffernan that Trump has long cultivated an image as the real-estate mogul playboy who likes to surround himself with “slinky models,” and beauty pageant queens. “I think the case is closed that he’s promiscuous and lecherous,” Heffernan said.

Weisberg also pointed to recent congressional testimony that Steele went to the FBI with information that was contained in the dossier because he was worried that Trump could be blackmailed. To Weisberg, Clifford’s story shows that Trump is willing to pay someone to keep secrets about his sex life.

“It looks a lot like paying blackmail,” Weisberg said. “Again this story has a relevance in the dossier context and in the Russia context, because it substantiates a very real concern that (Trump) is highly black-mailable if he did all these things.”