wrote about the affair and AMI's purchase of the story, largely corroborating the 2016 Wall Street Journal report, except that the affair had gone on for nine months. The story was based on McDougal's handwritten memoirs of the affair, which McDougal's friend passed to Farrow. McDougal confirmed to Farrow that she had written the memoirs. Farrow quotes the memoirs as stating that McDougal first met Trump in June 2006 at a party hosted by Hugh Hefner at the Playboy Mansion. Trump kept in contact with McDougal, and they had sex on the first date. She said she met members of his family and he promised to buy her an apartment in New York. To avoid "paper trails", Trump had McDougal pay for flight and hotel expenses when she flew to meet him, then he reimbursed her. McDougal ended the affair in April 2007 because she felt guilty about sleeping with a married man; she was also offended by derogatory comments he made about her mother and a Black man who was dating a female acquaintance of his. McDougal declined to discuss details of the alleged affair due to her agreement with AMI, but she told Farrow that she regretted signing that agreement, saying, "It took my rights away... I don't know what I'm allowed to talk about. I'm afraid to even mention his name." Farrow also wrote that Pecker has a "favorite tactic" of buying "a story in order to bury it". AMI said it did not publish McDougal's story as it was not credible, and a spokesperson for the White House denied the affair. On March 22, 2018, Anderson Cooper conducted an interview in which McDougal detailed the affair and apologized to Melania Trump. She said that Trump tried to give her money after they first had sex, that their relationship lasted 10 months, and that she visited Trump "many dozens of times". In March 2018, McDougal filed a lawsuit against AMI in Los Angeles Superior Court, aiming to invalidate the non-disclosure agreement. On April 19, 2018, AMI settled with McDougal, which allowed her to speak about the alleged affair. In July 2018, The New York Times reported that two months before the 2016 presidential election, Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, had secretly recorded a conversation between him and Trump regarding paying McDougal. Rudy Giuliani, then representing Trump in a personal capacity, said that Trump did not know of