Karen McDougal, the former Playboy Playmate who alleges she had an affair with President Trump, says she was in love with the then-reality television star with whom she had unprotected sex dozens of times after they met in 2006.
In her first television interview, McDougal told Anderson Cooper of CNN that she developed feelings for the then-real estate mogul during their 10-month relationship, the Daily Mail reported.
McDougal, 46, also told CNN that she and Trump had sex on their first date and that she went home afterward 'crying in the backseat of a car' when he offered her cash after they made love.
"After we had been intimate, he tried to pay me, and I actually didn't know how to take that," she said.
She said she was hurt by the cash offer, which she turned down.
"I don't even know how to describe the look on my face," she said. "It must have been so sad."
McDougal says she told Trump: "That's not me. I'm not that kind of girl."
"And he said, 'Oh', and he said, 'You're really special'," she said, adding that "it hurt me that he saw me in that light."
The White House has denied the president had an affair with McDougal.
McDougal also tearfully recalls feeling guilty when she went to Trump's apartment in Trump Tower and he showed her Melania Trump's bedroom.
McDougal thought it was odd that Trump's wife slept in a separate bedroom.
"I thought maybe they were having issues," she said.
McDougal recalls feeling uncomfortable walking into the apartment of a married man whose wife just had a baby.
"I couldn't wait to get out of the apartment, I think," she said.
"Doing something, doing something wrong is bad enough, and when you're doing something wrong, and you're in the middle of somebody else's home or bed or whatever, that just puts it a little old stab in your heart, and I just couldn't wait to get out of the apartment.
"I wanted to go back to my hotel room."
McDougal expressed regret over the affair, saying she felt guilty. Nonetheless, despite the guilt, she carried on with Trump for the better part of a year.
"When I look back, I know it's wrong," the 1998 Playmate of the Year said.
"I'm really sorry for that. I know it's the wrong thing to do.
"But back in those days, I was a different girl, you know, I had fun. I was in the Playboy scene.
"I was just enjoying life as much as I could. And when I got with him there were real feelings between the two of us. Not just myself, not just him.
"There was a real relationship there, and I kind of out of sight, out of mind with everything else.
"And deep inside, I did have a lot of guilt. But I still continued.
"What can you say except I'm sorry?" she said.
"I'm sorry. I wouldn't want it done to me."
McDougal said that Trump's rough persona in public is different from the man she knew.
She says Trump was "charming" and "charismatic".
When McDougal was asked if Trump had genuine feelings for her, she said: "Of course he did, mm-hm. I know he did."
She said Trump "always" told her that he loved her. The two even had nicknames for each other.
"He would call me baby, or he'd call me beautiful Karen," McDougal said.
McDougal filed a lawsuit this week to get out of a non-disclosure agreement she says she was "pressured" into signing by the publisher of the National Enquirer.
She told CNN that they first met in 2006, when NBC was filming an episode of Celebrity Apprentice at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles.
"He said hello like he would to anybody and throughout the night, it was kind of obvious that there was an attraction from his part to me," McDougal said.
"And I kind of blew it off."
She said Trump continued with his courtship even though his wife at the time, Melania, had just given birth to their only son, Barron, in March.
"I thought it was kind of cute and funny," McDougal says of Trump's interest in her.
"And at the end of the night, after striking up many conversations, he actually asked me to write my phone number down for him to keep."
McDougal said that the relationship progressed and that she thought it had the potential for a long-term romance.
She said she was invited to Trump events that included his family. McDougal recalled meeting all of Trump's children - with the exception of newborn Barron.
McDougal is photographed with Eric Trump, whom she described as a "friendly" person. She said the two met at a release party for Trump Vodka.
At another party that took place soon afterward, she also met Ivanka Trump. McDougal said Donald Trump would often brag about his daughter and that he would tell her she was just as pretty as Ivanka.
"You know, he's very proud of Ivanka. As he should be," she said.
"I mean, she's a brilliant woman. She's beautiful. That's his daughter, and he should be proud of her.
"He said I was beautiful like her."
McDougal said that Trump would pay for her flights whenever she would travel to meet him.
She said he assumed it was in order to make sure there was no paper trail.
McDougal also said she never suspected Trump was involved with other women.
"I didn't know he was intimate with other ladies," she said.
"I thought I was the only one."
The suit, reported by the New York Times, claims the company, American Media Inc., which publishes the National Enquirer, worked 'secretly' with Trump's personal lawyer Michael Cohen to engineer the agreement.
Under the deal, she got a $150,00 payment – shared with her lawyers – and what she believed to be the promise of magazine cover stories and fitness columns.
However the agreement barred her from discussing any relationship with Trump.
Her suit argues that the agreement is "void due to both fraud and illegality," and seeks to restore her ability to talk about the alleged affair.
"The agreement is contrary to the basic principles of law, fairness, and the public interest," it maintains.
Earlier this month, porn star Stormy Daniels filed suit in the same court to get relief from a non-disclosure agreement that gave her a $130,000 payment.
Daniels signed her NDA with Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, referred to in the McDougal suit as Trump's "personal fixer".
As the suit puts it, "For several years, Ms. McDougal led a 'Hollywood' life, attending events and parties as both honored guest and hostess. During that time, Ms. McDougal had a 10-month relationship with Mr. Trump."
After another former Playboy playmate Carrie Stevens revealed the relationship on Twitter days after Trump got the GOP nomination, McDougal decided she did not want to 'sit back and wait to become tabloid fodder.'
"If the story was going to become national news, she wanted to be the one to tell it to ensure that the account was accurate and not lurid grist for the tabloid mill," according to the suit.
She hired attorney Keith Davidson, who according to the suit was "working closely with representatives for Mr. Trump while pretending to advocate on her behalf."
The suit then argues that McDougal was involved in a "catch and kill" arrangement, where outlets sometimes buy a story for the purpose of killing it.
American Media Inc denied hiding damaging stories about GOP nominee.
The suit say Davidson told his client that the National Enquirer would not publish the story because AMI's owner, David Pecker, is "close personal friends with Mr. Trump."
What followed was the $150,000 deal, where her lawyers got to keep 45 per cent.
The suit, filed by her new legal team, argues that AMI and Davidson "failed to tell Ms. McDougal that the contract's fine print did not actually obligate AMI" to run fitness columns by her or put her on magazine covers.
She was "pressured" into signing it, according to her suit.
She hired a pro bono attorney, Ted Boutros, and negotiated an amendment to her August 2016 non-disclosure agreement allowing her to respond to "legitimate press inquiries" about her alleged relationship. But the suit calls it "another trick to designed to silence her."
The suit also says that AMI hired a PR-team who ghost-wrote her responses, including to the New Yorker.
Among the responses they fed her was one saying, "I don't really like to talk about things other than my interests and passions – and that's health, wellness, etc., etc.!!"
Another response read: "I have no desire in discussing anything that is not directly tied to my passions of beauty and health, so thank you for asking, but I see no need to comment on rumors and speculation."
The lawsuit comes weeks after McDougal told The New Yorker of details about how she and President Trump met back in 2006 at a party that was hosted by Hugh Hefner at the Playboy Mansion.
Trump took an immediate liking to McDougal she later wrote in her journal, noting that one of the magazine's marketing executives joked: "Wow, he was all over you - I think you could be his next wife."
His third wife Melania was back in New York with the couple's three-month old Barron at the time, and shortly after the party McDougal was invited to have dinner with Trump in his private bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel.
That encounter was also detailed in her journal, with McDougal writing that it culminated with the pair's first sexual encounter.
When they were done, Trump offered to give McDougal money.
"He offered me money," wrote McDougal in her journal.
"I looked at him (+ felt sad) + said, 'No thanks - I'm not that girl. I slept w/you because I like you - NOT for money'- He told me 'you are special.'"
McDougal, who was the Playmate of the Month for December 1997 and later Playmate of the Year for 1998, said she was drawn to Trump's personality above all else.
"I was so nervous! I was into his intelligence + charm. Such a polite man," she wrote in her journal.
McDougal began to see Trump whenever he was in Los Angeles, which at the time was quite often due to his work on The Apprentice.
It would always be at the same bungalow and President Trump would always have the same meal said McDougal, who was also quite impressed by the fact that he never drank alcohol.
The affair soon moved out of the bungalow and into the real world however, with McDougal claiming she met Trump's children, got a private tour of his New York City residence and began flying around the country so the two could be together.
The affair would ultimately last 10 months, and it would be 10 years after it ended that McDougal found herself silenced after signing a US$150,000 deal with media company AMI, which is owned by President Trump's close friend David Pecker.
President Trump has denied the affair through a spokesperson, with the White House stating: "This is an old story that is just more fake news. The President says he never had a relationship with McDougal."
One such event was the Lake Tahoe golf tournament – the same place where Trump allegedly began an affair with pornstar Stormy Daniels that same year.
McDougal claims that the relationship began to fall apart when Trump began making racially charged comments about her friendship with an African American man.
He would reportedly tell her that she liked "the big black d***."
She also became increasingly concerned about what her mother would think of her lifestyle.
In April 2007, after ten months, she finally ended the affair.
McDougal, the 1998 Playmate of the Year and runner up Playmate of the 90s, said she sold her story to the National Enquirer's publishing company, according to the Wall Street Journal, who first broke the story around the time of the election after reviewing the details of her contract.
But the National Enquirer never published McDougal's allegations, and were using the contract to instead operate as an NDA to ensure McDougal kept quiet about the affair according to the report.
McDougal and American Media Inc., which owns the National Enquirer, agreed to the transaction in early August, the Wall Street Journal reported.
American Media Inc. said in a statement the US$150,000 was payment for exclusive life rights to any story related to a relationship McDougal may have had with a married man - and for fitness columns written by her.
The contract, according to the Wall Street Journal, kept McDougal from disclosing her story on other outlets and established damages of at least US$150,000 if she shared her account elsewhere.
But American Media Inc. didn't plan on publishing the story, even though McDougal expected it to run, people familiar with the situation told the Wall Street Journal.
"AMI has not paid people to kill damaging stories about Mr Trump," the company said in the statement.
Meanwhile, McDougal admits she's nervous about finally sharing her story. But says she was inspired to come forward after Stormy Daniels made her affair public.
And she hopes to use her story to inspire other women to think before signing agreements that could force them into silence.
The National Enquirer has supported Trump throughout the presidential campaign.
American Media Inc CEO David Pecker told the Wall Street Journal in a statement it was known that he and Trump are friends.
But he used the National Enquirer's coverage of Trump's affair with Marla Maples when he was married to his first wife Ivana was a proof of the publication's independence.
The McDougal controversy re-emerged in the midst of turmoil surrounding the Trump administration.
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