The adult film actress who claims she had an affair more than a decade ago with President Trump has filed a defamation lawsuit against him.
In an escalating legal fight against Trump, Stormy Daniels’ lawyer Michael Avenatti filed the complaint in federal court in New York on Monday.
The lawsuit is over an April 18 tweet by the president that said a forensic sketch of a man who allegedly threatened Daniels over the alleged affair — whose real name is Stephanie Clifford — in 2011 was a “total con job.”
A sketch years later about a nonexistent man. A total con job, playing the Fake News Media for Fools (but they know it)! https://t.co/9Is7mHBFda
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 18, 2018
In a tweet, Avenatti said Trump is “well aware of what transpired and his complicity.”
“By calling the incident a ‘con job,’ Mr. Trump’s statement would be understood to state that Ms. Clifford was fabricating the crime and the existence of the assailant, both of which are prohibited under New York law, as well as the law of numerous other states,” Avenatti wrote in the lawsuit.
“It was apparent that Mr. Trump meant to convey that Ms. Clifford is a liar, someone who should not be trusted, that her claims about the threatening encounter are false, and that she was falsely accusing the individual depicted in the sketch of committing a crime, where no crime had been committed. […] Mr. Trump made his statement either knowing it was false, had serious doubts about the truth of his statement, or made the statement with reckless disregard for its truth or falsity,” Avenatti added.
The affair allegedly took place in 2006. Trump has denied there was ever any sexual encounter.
The suit is separate from another lawsuit in which Daniels is suing the president’s personal attorney Michael Cohen over the legality of a 2016 hush agreement in which she was paid $130,000. That lawsuit is on hold for 90 days amid a federal criminal investigation into Cohen in New York.
