Trump's legal team tried to silence Stormy Daniels (yes, again)

By now, the basics of Donald Trump's Stormy Daniels scandal are probably well known. However, there is a new twist in the story that suggests the ordeal has an important new chapter.

As regular readers probably remember, Trump paid the adult film actress $130,000 just before Election Day 2016 as part of a deal in which Daniels would keep quiet about an alleged sexual encounter she had with the future president. (Trump has denied having an affair with Daniels.) The point, of course, was to prevent the public from learning about the alleged encounter, which, according to Daniels, occurred shortly after Trump's third wife gave birth to his youngest child.

Trump's former personal attorney Michael Cohen exposed the fact that Trump had laundered the payments through his company to cover them up, which ultimately led to criminal charges against the former president. Prosecutors charged the Republican with 34 crimes, and a jury found Trump guilty on all 34 counts. The Republican candidate for the highest office in the land is currently awaiting sentencing.

But as bizarre as it may seem, there is new evidence that eight years after Trump paid Daniels for his silence just before Election Day 2016, the Republican candidate is also trying to pay Daniels for his silence just before Election Day 2024. As NBC News summarized:

For those who may have missed the fact that Rachel told the story on All In with Chris Hayes, let's take a look at what we know now.

A jury found Trump guilty of crimes related to the hush money payment to the porn star, but Daniels still owed the former president a significant amount in legal fees from various cases, including an ill-fated defamation lawsuit filed by her now-jailed lawyer.

She launched a crowdfunding campaign to raise enough money to pay those bills, which worked: Daniels owed Trump hundreds of thousands of dollars, and her supporters donated what she needed.

At that point, her attorneys began negotiating with the Republican candidate's attorneys over the exact amount, raising questions about interest, according to written correspondence between the legal teams obtained by Rachel. For example, at one point Team Trump wanted $652,000, while Team Daniels said the total should be closer to $600,000.

And as part of that process, the former president's lawyers decided to add a variable to the negotiations: Trump would accept less money in exchange for Daniels' silence.

In other words, Trump's lawyers assumed Daniels was owed an amount, but were willing to accept less than that amount if the adult film actress signed an agreement not to speak about the former president.

Trump's lawyer did not respond to requests for comment. In a statement to MSNBC, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung falsely claimed that the documents Maddow was referring to “were obtained as part of an illegal, foreign hacking attack against President Trump and his team.” The fact is that Daniels' attorney provided Rachel with the documents.