Stormy Daniels, the porn star who was paid to keep quiet about her affair with Donald Trump, sued the president Friday, alleging that her nondisclosure agreement before the 2016 election is void because Trump did not sign it.
In the lawsuit filed Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court, Daniels – whose real name is Stephanie Clifford – said she wanted to go public with the story of her affair with Trump a decade earlier in the weeks leading up to the election. The lawsuit was first reported by NBC News.
Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, and Daniels’ attorney, Keith Davidson, negotiated what the lawsuit calls a “hush agreement” in which she would be paid $130,000. After delays and even a wholesale cancellation of the contract by Daniels on Oct, 17, the payment arrived on Oct. 27, 12 days before the election, according to emails reviewed by The Washington Post. Cohen said recently that he used his own money to “facilitate” the payment.
The lawsuit suggests Trump was aware of the agreement and that the money was intended to influence the outcome of the 2016 election, bolstering two complaints filed with the Federal Election Commission that say the payment violated election law because it was not reported as an in-kind campaign donation.
The actress first detailed her account of an alleged extramarital affair with Trump in 2011, when the celebrity website The Dirty published it but then removed the material under the threat of a lawsuit, according to the site’s founder, Nik Richie.
Her story then remained largely out of public view until a month before the 2016 presidential election.
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