Is Stormy Daniels just the tip of the iceberg? Her attorney Michael Avenatti claimed on Friday that more women have come forward with “similar stories” involving President Trump, though he has not yet “vetted these stories to a great degree.”
“We’ve been approached by six separate women who have claimed to have similar stories to that of my client,” Avenatti said on CNN. “At least two have (nondisclosure agreements). We’re in the very early stages of vetting those stories.”
Asked by Chris Cuomo whether the allegations all involve Trump, Avenatti said “yes.” George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, who knows Avenatti, described him on “Morning Joe” as someone not “given to bravado or reckless comments.”
“The Michael I know would not be making any allegations that he couldn’t back up,” Turley said.
This is vague information that likely won’t be fleshed out for weeks, meaning we’re headed for a slow-rolling news cycle driven by allegations of infidelity leveled against the president. Daniels’ much-anticipated “60 Minutes” interview is set for March 25, and the hearing on her lawsuit against Trump and his lawyer, Michael Cohen, is not scheduled to occur until mid-July.
And she’s just one woman. It’s possible that Daniels’ decision to speak publicly about her alleged relationship with Trump opened up the floodgates, emboldening other women with whom the president had similar interactions, or would like to claim they did, to do the same.
Whether or not you’re inclined to accept any of the allegations at all, they’re coming, and it’s the media’s job to vet them. Which is a prospect made all the more exhausting by much of the industry’s clear inability to keep salacious stories about Trump in proportion to their importance, and all the more frustrating by our president’s open courting of the “Playboy” reputation in decades past.
Buckle up.
