NEW YORK — Twelve days before Donald Trump won one of the most astonishing upsets in the history of the American presidency, his fixer wired $130,000 to a porn star’s lawyer.

The furtive Oct. 27, 2016, payment came at the height of the election cycle — one day before the FBI director told Congress he was reopening an investigation into Hillary Clinton — and concerned an alleged tryst a decade earlier.

Stormy Daniels, an adult film star from Louisiana whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, had privately described having sex with Trump at a charity golf tournament event in 2006, months after the birth of the future president’s youngest son.

Trump wanted to shut Daniels up, the fixer, Michael Cohen, would later testify.

The payment seemed to work. Trump beat Clinton and became the 45th president. At one point during Trump’s presidency, Daniels apparently signed a statement saying she neither had a sexual affair with him nor received a hush money payment.

But Cohen and Daniels would both change their stories. Daniels later provided graphic accounts of Trump pursuing her in a hotel suite in 2006 and then having sex with her.

Cohen, pleading guilty in 2018 to a battery of criminal charges, said Trump had ordered the payment to Daniels to salvage his presidential campaign, a potential crime.

Now, Trump — who denies having sex with Daniels — finds himself out of the White House and in legal peril, with the payment expected to be at the center of a case that on Thursday produced the first indictment of a former U.S. president.

Here’s a look back at the events that led to this historic moment:

July 2006

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