The lawyer who elicited the $130,000 payment from former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen to buy Stormy Daniels’ silence about an alleged affair with Donald Trump said the payment took on a new urgency after the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape. | Hector Retamal/AFP/Getty Images Legal Former Stormy Daniels lawyer says hush money deals 'done for political reasons'

Keith Davidson, the attorney who negotiated hush money payments from President Donald Trump on behalf of adult film star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, said Monday that the release of the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape forced the president into paying up to protect his 2016 electoral prospects.

According to Davidson, the $130,000 payment he elicited from former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen to buy Daniels’ silence about an alleged affair with Trump took on a new urgency in the weeks leading up to the 2016 presidential election after the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape, which featured Trump boasting about groping and kissing women without their consent.


The attorney alleged that while the deals for Daniels and McDougal had been under negotiation for months, Cohen at first missed a deadline for making the payment to Daniels.

But that changed with the “Access Hollywood” tape’s release, he said.

"The 'Access Hollywood' tape was the motivating factor in this case resolving," Davidson said in an interview with ABC News that aired Monday morning. "It defeats the argument that this was done purely for personal reasons. It was done for political reasons. The natural conclusion is that after the 'Access Hollywood' tape, that something like this could be the straw that broke the camel's back."

Federal prosecutors last year used the payments, which Cohen said were made at Trump’s direction and which Trump eventually reimbursed him for, to charge Cohen with a campaign finance violation. The felony is one of a slew of charges Cohen pleaded guilty to last year and was sentenced to three years in prison for.

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Trump’s explanations on the issue have evolved as more information about the hush money deals emerged, at first denying any knowledge of the payments but now insisting “there were no violations of the campaign finance laws by me" and that the payments were made for personal, not political, reasons.

Davidson cooperated with federal investigators in the case against Cohen, and House investigators last week included Davidson in a massive document request from 81 people and entities relating to Trump as part of a sweeping oversight investigation.

Both Daniels and McDougal have since acquired new legal representation, accusing Davidson of colluding with Cohen to bury their stories.

While Davidson denied those charges, he acknowledged Monday that he became a confidant of Cohen's “in a very large sense” and disputed the former Trump fixer's recent congressional testimony in which he said he had no interest in a position in the Trump administration.

Davidson said Cohen's rejection for a White House position amounted to a “personal embarrassment” for the president's former personal lawyer. He said Cohen similarly expressed anger and disbelief at Trump’s lack of reimbursement for the hush money deals, which The New York Times reported last week came after Trump had already been sworn in as president.