Stormy Daniels, an adult film actress who says that she had a sexual encounter with Trump back in 2006, began getting ready to put her story out. This was part of a larger thing that Trump had going on at the time with the national enquirer known as Catch and Kill. Michael Cohen, Trump's longtime lawyer and fixer, decided that he would pay Stormy Daniels $130,000 of his own money. He set up a shell company to process those payments named Essential Consultants. The story didn't come out, and Trump won the election.