A former model for Playboy magazine, who claimed to have had an affair with United States President Donald Trump, on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against a media company, seeking to invalidate a 2016 agreement that prohibited her from speaking about the alleged relationship, AP reported.

Karen McDougal’s lawsuit alleged that American Media Inc – the company that owns the tabloid National Enquirer – paid her $1,50,000 (Rs 97 lakh) during Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016 for the rights to the story of her affair. But the company never published the story.

The lawsuit claimed that Trump’s attorney, Michael Cohen, had been secretly involved in her discussions with American Media Inc. The company, however, said it did not find McDougal’s claims of an affair with Trump credible and paid her to write fitness columns instead.

Court allows defamation case against Trump

Meanwhile, a New York court on Tuesday allowed a defamation suit against the US president – filed by a woman who accused Trump of sexually harassing her in 2007 – to proceed, The New York Times reported. Judge Jennifer Schecter of the Manhattan Supreme Court dismissed the argument made by Trump’s counsel that a state court has no jurisdiction over a sitting president.

Summer Zervos, a former contestant on Trump’s reality show The Apprentice, had claimed he kissed her twice on the lips during a meeting in his New York office in 2007 and then repeated the act aggressively when they were in Beverly Hills, The Guardian reported. Zevros accused Trump of defaming her by describing her claims as “total lies”.

On March 6, adult film actor Stephanie Clifford – better known by her screen name Stormy Daniels – had sued the US president, asking a court in Los Angeles to declare invalid the “hush agreement” she signed before the 2016 elections to keep silent about their decade-old affair. She argues that the agreement was void because Trump had not signed it.