New Delhi: Former US president Donald Trump’s alleged “Stormy” affair with an adult film star has made history by making him the first American ex-president to be indicted. On Tuesday, a week after the indictment order was passed by a grand jury, Trump appeared at the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse Tuesday to face the charges against him.
Trump is charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, at the centre of which are the allegations of paying “hush money” to adult film star Stormy Daniels in the run-up to the 2016 presidential elections, which he went on to win. The $130,000 was allegedly paid to Daniels to stop her from revealing that she had had sex with Trump in 2006, while he was already married to present wife Melania. Trump is also accused of paying ‘hush money” to Playboy model Karen McDougal to cover up another sexual encounter and to a former Trump Tower doorman to silence his claim that the business-tycoon-turned-Republican politician had a child out of wedlock.
While it is not illegal to pay “hush money” or compensation for a non-disclosure agreement, Trump is accused of falsifying business records and breaking election laws by trying to cover up the payments. The former US president has pleaded “not guilty” to all 34 charges.
Trump’s indictment and trial comes in the backdrop of his having announced his campaign for a second, non-consecutive presidential term ahead of the 2024 elections.
Meanwhile Daniels has lost a defamation case she had filed against the former US president over one of his 2018 tweets which referred to her allegations of receiving hush money from him as a “total con job”. She has reportedly been ordered to pay at least $121,000 to Trump’s legal team, over and above the $500,000 she had previously been ordered to pay his lawyers.
The adult film star had previously claimed that her former lawyer Michael Avenatti had filed the defamation suit without her permission.
Daniels’s defeat in the defamation case is not being viewed as connected to either the original hush-money payment or the 34 charges against Trump. But the development adds to the complications and controversy that have made up a significant portion of her professional career and personal life over the past five years.
ThePrint traces her life to the point, and beyond, the allegations that made her international news.
Adult film work
Born on 17 March 1979 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, according to media reports, Daniel’s real name is Stephanie Gregory Clifford. Her pseudonym is reportedly inspired by the name Nikki Sixx, bassist of the rock band Mötley Crüe, gave to his daughter – Storm – and her preference for Jack Daniel’s whiskey.
In interviews she has given over the years, Daniel’s has been quoted as saying that she was raised by a “neglectful mother” and that she first worked as a stripper while she was still a 17-year-old high school student. She reportedly spent a few years at Baton Rouge’s Gold Club, working as a stripper and dancer, before becoming an adult film actor and director.
She has also been quoted as saying that at the Gold Club, she found the maternal warmth she’d long been missing. “I learned all my early life skills from the strippers at that first club I worked,” she has reportedly said.
From the beginning, Daniels stood out from the other dancers, stated a Vogue profile published in 2018. She was driven. She worked six days a week. She’d appear when the club opened, at 3 PM., and stay until it closed, at 2 AM, the profile went on to add.
In the years succeeding her adult film debut in 2002, in a film titled Heat, Daniels rose fast in the industry, winning awards by 2004 and making numerous reality television appearances over the 2000s, as well as guest starring in several popular music videos and American comedy films of the era.
Fallout of 2006 affair with Trump
The alleged Trump-Stormy story was broken less than a year into the former’s presidency by the Wall Street Journal, which cited anonymous insiders as admitting that the President’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, had organised a hush-money payment of $130,000 to Daniels to silence her claims that she had begun a consensual affair with the President when they met at a celebrity golf tournament in Nevada, just a year after he had married his current wife Melania.
Daniels had filed a lawsuit against Trump in March 2018 over the validity of the non-disclosure agreement (NDA) she was made to sign by Cohen, claiming that Trump had never personally signed the NDA himself. She then filed her civil defamation lawsuit against Trump’s tweet a month later, which was dismissed that October.
Daniels had also been ordered to pay $500,000 in legal fees to Trump, an order upheld by a federal appeals court in 2022. Daniels contested the decision and was quoted in media reports as saying that she would “go to jail” before paying even “a penny” to Trump. But lost again at the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Tuesday, and ordered to pay at least $121,000 to Trump’s legal team.
Both the White House and Cohen himself had issued strong denials to the Wall Street Journal report, with Cohen reportedly adding that it was the “second time” she (Daniels) was “raising outlandish allegations” and “perpetuating a false narrative” that had been “consistently denied by all parties since at least 2011”.
Cohen has since been disbarred and served a three-year sentence in US federal prison, and later house arrest, after being convicted of perjury and tax evasion fraud in light of campaign finance violations in relation to the legality of hush money payments he had allegedly made to Daniels and others on behalf of Trump.
Avenatti atrocities
Amid the deep ramifications of the Daniels-Trump affair, another twist in the tale was revealed in the form of the porn star’s lawyer at the time of the lawsuits, Michael Avenatti.
Taking full advantage of the media attention afforded to Daniels’ March 2018 lawsuit, Avenatti subsequently became a regular interview guest on US print and television media, acting as the spokesperson on all things Stormy and positioning himself as a high-potential presidential candidate for the Democratic Party in 2020.
However, the house of cards came crashing down for Avenatti, first with an arrest on suspected domestic violence, followed by convictions in 2020 for attempting to extort Nike to the tune of $25 million, as well as fraud and embezzling funds from multiple clients, including Daniels. Avenatti is currently serving over 20 years in federal prison for his crimes.
Years after officially splitting with Avenatti, when he not only was found to have defrauded her out of book proceeds but was also ordered to not contact her, Daniels claimed in March 2022 on Twitter that Avenatti had filed the lawsuit (the defamation lawsuit she lost) without her permission, and referred to him as “a terrible excuse for an attorney”.
(Edited by Poulomi Banerjee)
Also read: Covering up ‘hush money’ paid to porn star, Playboy model & doorman — what are charges against Trump