Stormy Daniels, an adult film star who said she had sex with Donald Trump, is said to have filed a lawsuit seeking to invalidate a nondisclosure agreement that she had signed just before the 2016 election, which prevented her from discussing her alleged sexual encounters with Mr Trump.
In the lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, Ms Daniels – whose real name is Stephanie Clifford – said she had wanted to go public with the story of her alleged relationship with Mr Trump. The lawsuit was first reported by NBC News.
But Mr Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, and Ms Daniels’s attorney at the time, Keith Davidson, negotiated what the lawsuit calls a “hush agreement”, the Washington Post reported, in which she would be paid $130,000 in exchange for her silence about the alleged relationship.
Ms Clifford and Mr Cohen signed the nondisclosure agreement on 28 October, 2016 – about a week before the election.
Along with claiming that the agreement is void because Mr Trump did not sign it, the lawsuit alleges that Mr Trump and Mr Cohen “aggressively sought to silence Ms Clifford as part of an effort to avoid her telling the truth, thus helping to ensure he won the Presidential Election.”
Mr Cohen said recently that he had used his own money to “facilitate” the payment. He has also said that “neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Ms Clifford, and neither reimbursed me for the payment, either directly or indirectly.”
The White House did not respond to The Independent‘s request for comment.
Ms Clifford alleges that she began an “intimate relationship” with Mr Trump in 2006 – a year after he married his current wife, Melania Trump – and that it continued “well into the year 2007”, according to the lawsuit.
Ms Clifford has claimed she had sex with Mr Trump once and then carried on a subsequent years-long platonic relationship. She has also denied that they had an affair. Mr Cohen and Mr Trump have also denied that there was ever an affair.
Neither Mr Cohen nor the White House immediately responded to the Associated Press’s requests for comment on Tuesday evening.
Agencies contributed to this report
