Donald Trump may have fathered a child with Playboy bunny Shera Bechard, who was paid $1.6 million for her silence–and an abortion–in a deal arranged by Trump lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen.
The father has been identified in media reports as long-time Trump pal Elliott Broidy, a deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee. He was forced to resign as a result of the scandal.
But circumstantial evidence which appeared on Reddit and elsewhere suggests Broidy was covering up for Trump in exchange for favors, influence and, indirectly, contracts for his companies worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
The allegation is supported by enough evidence, albeit circumstantial, to make it plausible. If true, it could mean more criminal exposure for both Trump and Cohen.
As one Reddit user suggests, “There are just too many inconsistencies [in the cover story] and it fits Trump’s pattern.”
Bechard, a strikingly attractive blonde with augmented breasts, looks remarkably like Stormy Daniels, the porn star who was also paid by Cohen to remain silent about her 2006 affair with Trump.
Trump paid Daniels $150,000 for her silence before the 2016 election and was later convicted of 34 counts of falsifying business records for covering up the hush money payment.
During the time in question, Trump was frequently spotted at Hef’s Playboy mansion in Los Angeles while he was filming “Celebrity Apprentice.”
A video shows Trump arriving at the mansion on one such occasion. Another Playboy model, Karen McDougal, is also in the video.
McDougal says she had a 10-month affair with Trump in 2006-07, shortly after wife Melania Trump gave birth to son Barron.
Trump has denied having a sexual relationship with her, and McDougal has threatened to sue Trump if he calls her a liar.
McDougal was paid $150,000 by The National Enquirer in a so-called “catch and kill” scheme. The tabloid, owned by long-time Trump pal David Pecker, silenced her with a non-disclosure agreement (NDA), but never ran the story.
Trump lawyer Cohen had a finger in the scheme.
It’s well known that Trump frequently brought “Apprentice” contestants to the mansion. One “Apprentice” contestant, who was taken to the Playboy mansion as a prize for winning, had this to say:
“Toward the end of the evening, I found myself in a small circle, conversing with Trump, Hefner and another contestant. With a wry smile, Trump looked at Hefner and said, ‘It’s hard for me to tell which of these girls are yours and which ones are mine.’”
“Trump liked to say that one of the things that made life worth living was getting your friends’ wives into bed,” according to author Michael Wolfe’s tell-all Trump book “Fire and Fury.”
Hefner was a big supporter of Trump’s candidacy in 2015. But within a year, the relationship had soured, according to Newsweek, citing Hefner’s son, Cooper Hefner as a source.
“We don’t respect the guy,” Cooper also told The Hollywood Reporter.
Although it’s unknown what, exactly, caused the falling out, the theory holds that it could have been Trump’s involvement with Bechard.
Comedian Tom Arnold lends some credibility on this point in a 2017 video discussing his and Trump’s relationship with Hefner and Trump’s penchant for bedding Playboy models.
“He was always certainly good to me…and to Donald Trump,” Arnold says of Hefner. “I’m not kidding at all. Well Donald had… two of his girlfriends were Playmates. Recently. I’m not even kidding on that either,” Arnold says. (See Below)
Another common link between Bechard, Daniels and McDougal is the fact that they used the same lawyer, Keith Davidson, to negotiate payments with Cohen. In fact, Cohen reportedly used the same aliases in Bechard’s and Daniels’ NDAs.
Cohen effectively had only one client… Donald Trump. So why would Cohen now suddenly be representing Broidy in this matter unless it in some way directly involved Trump?
Broidy claims he only hired Cohen after learning that the Trump fixer knew Bechard’s lawyer, according to The Washington Post.
“Mr. Cohen reached out to me after being contacted by this woman’s attorney, Keith Davidson,” Broidy said in his statement. “Although I had not previously hired Mr. Cohen, I retained Mr. Cohen after he informed me about his prior relationship with Mr. Davidson.”
The Beverly Hills lawyer is supposedly well-known for negotiating payments for NDAs and may have been a go-to guy for women like Bechard, McDougal and Daniels.
One troubling aspect of the Bechard NDA is the fact that it doesn’t explicitly address the issue of paternity, according to reports. Why would you agree to pay $1.6 million and then exclude any proof of paternity?
Although Bechard claimed Broidy was the father, the NDA reportedly states that matters relating to the alleged pregnancy and paternity of the alleged child are excluded from the claims resolved in the agreement, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Bechard declined to provide proof she was pregnant with Broidy’s child, a person familiar with the matter told The Journal.
If Trump needed someone to stand up for him, Broidy would be the perfect candidate. He’s well known for shady dealings in New York and attempts to peddle influence with the Trump administration.
In 2009, the California venture capitalist and reputed billionaire pleaded guilty to influence peddling for showering state officials with nearly $1 million in gifts and favors to win a lucrative contract with the New York State pension system, according to The New York Times.
Another state official, prosecutors said, was rewarded indirectly by Broidy when his relative was given a fake consulting contract worth more than $380,000,” according to The Times.
Broidy paid the $1.6 million to Bechard, not because he was the father of her baby, but because he hoped to wield influence with Trump on behalf of two Middle Eastern clients, with whom he sought to gain lucrative contracts, according to a separate story in The Times.
Hundreds of pages of correspondence between Broidy and George Nadar, a political adviser to the ruler of the United Arab Emirates, (UAE), show a concerted effort to influence the White House on behalf of the UAE and Saudi Arabia. \
For example, they urged Trump to sack Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson, and support more confrontational approaches to Iran and Qatar, according to the newspaper account.
In fact, Trump fired Tillerson over Twitter and appointed hardliner and Mike Pompeo as his replacement.
They also pressed Trump to meet privately, outside the White House, with the UAE leader.
Broidy also tried to peddle influence on behalf of Prime Minister Najib Razak of Malaysia.
The Southeast Asian leader was under investigation by American prosecutors for allegedly embezzling $3.5 billion from a state investment fund. Broidy tried to convince Trump to play golf with Najib to bolster his credibility in his home country.
Najib had the authority to award a lucrative Malaysian contract to Broidy’s private defense company, according to documents obtained by The Times.
In that light, paying to cover-up Trump’s affair with a Playboy model, her subsequent abortion and then, providing cover for the President would be small change compared with the leverage he would gain over Trump.
Whether there was a cover-up has never been definitively answered. Like other Trump scandals, he’s only covered by his denials.
As damaging as Trump’s Stormy Daniels affair has been, the revelation he impregnated Bechard would be catastrophic to his presidency. His evangelical base, already reeling from his dalliance with a porn star, would be utterly shocked if he had an affair that ended in an abortion.
Keith Girard has four decades of experience as an award-winning reporter, editor-in-chief, and senior media executive. Keith’s career began in Washington, D.C., where he was a reporter for The Washington Post and a contributing editor for Regardie’s and Washingtonian magazines. He also worked as a writer/producer in CNN’s Washington Bureau and has written non-fiction books on the U.S. Marines in the Gulf War and Donald Trump and two novels, “The Heidelberg Conundrum” and “The Curse of Northam Bay.”