Karen McDougal CNN

Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model who says she had an affair with President Donald Trump in 2006, filed a defamation lawsuit against Fox News, The New York Times reported on Thursday.

Specifically, McDougal’s suit accuses the host Tucker Carlson of defaming her by saying on his show last year that she „approached Donald Trump and threatened to ruin his career and humiliate his family if he doesn’t give them money,“ according to The Times.

In a statement to CNN’s Oliver Darcy, Fox said it planned to „vigorously defend Tucker Carlson against these meritless claims.“

McDougal’s allegation of an affair with Trump was part of a 2018 federal court case involving Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen.

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Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model who says she had an affair with President Donald Trump, filed a defamation lawsuit against Fox News.

The New York Times reported on Thursday that McDougal’s lawsuit, filed in New York, named Fox News as the defendant and accused the host Tucker Carlson of defaming her by asserting on his show last year that she had extorted Trump.

Specifically, McDougal’s suit says Carlson defamed her by saying she „approached Donald Trump and threatened to ruin his career and humiliate his family if he doesn’t give them money,“ according to The Times.

The Times noted that defamation suits against media companies are notoriously difficult for plaintiffs to win and are often settled or dismissed by judges before they can go to trial.

In a statement to CNN’s Oliver Darcy, Fox said it planned to „vigorously defend Tucker Carlson against these meritless claims.“

McDougal says she had an affair with Trump in 2006, while he was married to his third and current wife, Melania. McDougal’s allegation was part of a 2018 federal court case involving Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen.

In August 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to eight federal charges in the Southern District of New York, including tax fraud, bank fraud, and violating federal campaign-finance law by making a contribution to the Trump campaign in the form of a $130,000 hush-money payment to the adult-film actress Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet about her allegation that she had an affair with Trump.

Cohen also said he arranged for an illegal corporate donation from American Media Inc., the owner of the tabloid newspaper The National Enquirer, through a payment to McDougal to buy her silence in the weeks before the 2016 election. In a practice known as a „catch and kill,“ AMI purchased the rights to McDougal’s story for $150,000 but never ran it, protecting Trump from negative press coverage.

Cohen is serving a three-year prison sentence on those charges and an additional charge of lying to Congress brought by the former special counsel Robert Mueller’s office.

The Times reported that McDougal’s suit also pointed to Carlson’s description of the „catch and kill“ payment as a „ransom“ and „a classic case of extortion“ in an episode of his show last December.

„No matter which version of Trump’s statements one believes, Trump never once claimed that he was extorted,“ McDougal’s attorney said in the lawsuit, according to The Times.