{"id":222,"date":"2026-05-26T15:37:36","date_gmt":"2026-05-26T15:37:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=222"},"modified":"2026-05-26T15:37:36","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T15:37:36","slug":"when-donald-paid-stormy-a-history-of-hush-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=222","title":{"rendered":"When Donald Paid Stormy: A History of Hush Money"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Is it a stretch to submit that Donald Trump faces a looming indictment for mishandling a payoff to the porn star Stormy Daniels and not, say, for inciting an insurrection, because the Daniels case has an obvious tagline? Pick any news outlet\u2014Times<\/em>, Fox, Breitbart. It\u2019s always the \u201chush-money case.\u201d Here\u2019s a concept you can sell. Epsteins, Weinsteins, Charlie Sheens. It\u2019s easily comprehensible, onomatopoeic. Hush.<\/em> The term is sultry, lubricious; typically what\u2019s being hushed is evidence of sex. Unlike the confidential legal settlement or the corporate N.D.A., hush money carries a whiff of the entrepreneurial. When Joseph Addison and Richard Steele started The Tatler<\/em>, in 1709, they courted it. \u201cI expect hush-money to be regularly sent for every folly or vice any one commits in this whole town,\u201d Steele wrote. He was the first to employ the term but not the practice; for about as long as people have been saying stuff, others have been paying them not to. In Genesis, the King of Gerar tries to seduce Abraham\u2019s wife, then pays him off with sheep, oxen, and servants. The King calls it \u201ca covering of the eyes.\u201d See nothing, say nothing.<\/p>\n

Read more I Am a Woman in My Thirties, and I Am Thriving<\/a><\/p>\n

What\u2019s the going rate these days for silence? Inflation doesn\u2019t compute precisely for sheep and oxen. Michael Jackson paid two hundred million. Bill Cosby paid three and a half, Bill O\u2019Reilly forty-five. The sum depends on what you\u2019re trying to hush up. When Bette Davis\u2019s husband recorded her in bed with Howard Hughes, she paid him seventy-five thousand dollars to keep it private. Jerry Falwell,\u00a0Jr., provided the pool boy, whom Falwell liked to watch in bed with his own wife, with around two million. (Michael Cohen, Trump\u2019s fixer, helped broker a deal.) Rudy Giuliani, in his capacity as Trump\u2019s lawyer, once offered a mathematical model. \u201cI never thought a hundred thirty thousand was a real payment,\u201d he said, of the sum Trump paid to Daniels. \u201cIt\u2019s a nuisance payment. When I settle it as real or a real possibility, it\u2019s a couple million dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cThat\u2019s a preposterous statement,\u201d the victims\u2019-rights lawyer Gloria Allred said last week, when solicited for an expert opinion. \u201cIt\u2019s not like buying a car.\u201d A few years ago, Allred was criticized in the Times<\/em> for negotiating a confidentiality settlement between a client and Harvey Weinstein. In response, she noted that the settlement didn\u2019t preclude criminal charges; it was just a modicum of justice. She thought \u201chush money\u201d conveyed the wrong message. \u201cIt\u2019s a negative term,\u201d she said. (William Safire called it \u201calways strongly pejorative.\u201d) \u201cThere\u2019s nothing inherently wrong, and there\u2019s a lot that\u2019s right, when two people want to settle a matter.\u201d<\/p>\n

Through the ages, hush money has nevertheless been associated with dirty dealing. Thucydides hinted at it disapprovingly, Dickens scorned the payee more than the payer, Dostoyevsky viewed it as a transaction on the road to Hell. Sweeney Todd was hit up for hush money by his tonsorial rival; he slit the guy\u2019s throat instead.<\/p>\n

In the real world, the power dynamics are often lopsided. An alarming number of silencers are Presidents and their ilk: Hamilton, Jefferson, John Edwards. J.F.K. paid hush money of sorts, in the form of political capital, to J.\u00a0Edgar Hoover, who\u2019d discovered one of his affairs. Warren Harding sent hush money every year to a spurned mistress in possession of his love letters, which featured recurring characters that included Jerry the Penis. \u201cWish I could take you to Mount Jerry,\u201d Harding wrote in one. \u201cWonderful spot.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more The Despair of the Professor in the Age of A.I.<\/a><\/p>\n

On the Watergate tapes, discussing the burglars, Nixon may have uttered the phrase \u201chush money\u201d to his adviser Charles W. Colson, or maybe just something that sounded like it. (\u201cShush, honey\u201d?) Decades later, Trump was recorded discussing a different mistress with Cohen. Was that Trump saying \u201cPay with cash\u201d? Giuliani, never one to self-hush, argued on Fox News that Trump actually said, \u201cDon\u2019t<\/em> pay with cash.\u201d Giuliani explained that he had experience with surreptitious recordings: \u201cHow about four thousand hours of Mafia people on tape? I know how to listen to them, I know how to transcribe them. I\u2019ve dealt with much worse tapes than this.\u201d Folly, vice. Cover thine eyes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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What\u2019s a wrongdoer to do? A call was placed to Eric Dezenhall, a crisis-management specialist who has advised such clients as the Sacklers and ExxonMobil and who has consulted on scores of secret settlements. \u201cOne of the things you hear is, It\u2019s the coverup that gets you,\u201d Dezenhall said. \u201cThat\u2019s not true! This shouldn\u2019t be taken as something I advise or support, but coverups work all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, they work only if the public doesn\u2019t hear about them. \u201cTwenty years ago, if you wrote somebody a check to\u00a0stay quiet, it would stay quiet,\u201d Dezenhall said. \u201cThe problem today is people take your money, and then they go on TV anyway.\u201d Not all of them, though. Who knows what Dezenhall\u2019s clients\u2014billionaires, celebrities\u2014have kept hushed up? Dezenhall does, but he couldn\u2019t possibly say.\u00a0\u2666<\/p>\n

Read more How a Small-Town Clerk\u2019s Misdeeds Upturned the Murdaugh Verdict<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Buying silence is as old as Genesis, Zach Helfand writes. Among the hushers: Bill Cosby, Michael Jackson, Bette Davis, and a U.S. President with a special friend called Jerry the Penis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":221,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-you-dont-say-dept"],"yoast_head":"\nWhen Donald Paid Stormy: A History of Hush Money - City Relocation News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=222\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"When Donald Paid Stormy: A History of Hush Money - City Relocation News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Buying silence is as old as Genesis, Zach Helfand writes. 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