Porn star Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, has filed a defamation suit against President Trump, the latest development in a saga that began in January 2018 when the Wall Street Journal published a story claiming that Trump attorney Michael Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 in October 2016 to stay quiet about claims she had sex with Trump in 2005.
Daniels is already engaged in litigation with Cohen over the legality of the nondisclosure agreement, and had previously filed another defamation suit against Cohen. Earlier this month, Clifford released a forensic sketch of a man she says threatened her on the street over her alleged affair with the president. On April 18, Trump sent out a tweet challenging the legitimacy of Clifford’s allegation:
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
Clifford’s new defamation lawsuit, filed Monday in New York, claims damages of more than $75,000 as a result of the tweet. “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,” according to Clifford’s attorney Michael Avenatti.
On Friday, a California judge halted one of Clifford’s lawsuits against Cohen for 90 days while a criminal investigation of Cohen is underway. CNN reports that the latest defamation case “appear[s] to be an effort to keep her case at the center of the news after a delay in a related case in California.” Avenatti told CNN the suggestion the latest defamation suit is an attempt to garner media attention is “absolutely baseless, absurd, moronic and ridiculous.”
