By Eli Watkins, CNN
A former Playboy model who is alleging an affair more than a decade ago with President Donald Trump apologized to his wife, first lady Melania Trump, in an interview Thursday evening.
“What can you say except, I’m sorry?” Karen McDougal said on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360.”
She continued, “I’m sorry. I wouldn’t want it done to me.”
The White House has denied the alleged affair, which came to light in a Wall Street Journal story shortly before the presidential election saying the parent company of The National Enquirer had paid for McDougal’s story and never published it.
McDougal is suing the company, American Media Inc., to get out of the contract and spoke about the affair to CNN on Thursday.
A corporate spokesman for American Media Inc. provided a statement to CNN in response to the suit, saying McDougal “has been free to respond to press inquiries about her relationship with President Trump since 2016” and that the company had not “silenced” her. McDougal’s complaint, meanwhile, says the company has threatened her with “financial ruin.”
