Anatomy of Trump's Hush-Money Troubles

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Rebecca Ballhaus and Joe Palazzolo, How a Mysterious Tip Led to Trump Conviction. When The Wall Street Journal uncovered an illicit payment to porn star Stormy Daniels, the now-former president tried to brush it aside. It didn’t work. Wall Street Journal, June 1, 2024, at page C1.
https://www.wsj.com/politics/pol ... my-daniels-707fa959

Note:
(a) The essay is free.
(b) "It was before 8 am on a Saturday, days before the 2016 election [to be held the next Tuesday], and Donald Trump's campaign was relieved: A Wall Street Journal article, revealing that the National Enquirer had paid $150,000 to quash a former Playboy model’s story of an affair with the candidate, was attracting little attention. * * * The Nov 4, 2016, story broke [online] late on a Friday. Its lack of purchase in the churn of the final days of Trump's campaign was cause for celebration in the Trump camp."

purchase (n): "a firm hold that allows someone or something to be pulled or lifted without sliding or falling  <Dancers use a special powder on their shoes to help them get a better purchase on the floor.>"
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/purchase
(c) "And in January 2018, when the Journal broke the news that Cohen had arranged a $130,000 payment to Daniels, it didn't set off the kind of panic that it might have in any other White House. * * * By January 2018, the story had legs. Cohen, the Journal learned, had paid Daniels $130,000, using a company called Essential Consultants that he’d formed in Delaware to wire the money to Davidson on Oct. 27, 2016.