To wage her costly legal battle “to speak openly” about her relationship with President Donald Trump, porn star Stormy Daniels has launched a crowdfunding site so she can cover her bills for attorneys, arbitration and related costs, including damages if she loses her case.
Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, filed a lawsuit last week, arguing she should be able to speak freely about her alleged affair with Trump, which has been reported to have started at a Lake Tahoe celebrity golf tournament in 2006. Daniels presumably also wants to share her account of how she came to sign a nondisclosure agreement and take $130,000 in hush money in the month before the 2016 presidential election.
Daniels said the agreement, which laid out terms of the payment, isn’t valid because it was never actually signed by Trump. She’s also fighting a temporary restraining order that was issued against her in private arbitration in late February. The agreement stipulated that any disputes about the arrangement would be heard in private arbitration, not in open court.
On Monday, Daniels offered to pay Trump $130,000 to buy her way out of the contract, “the latest jab” in a legal and public relations battle between Daniels, an adult film actress and director, and the president and his private attorney Michael Cohen, the Washington Post reported.
On her crowdfunding site, Daniels said she wants to speak “honestly and openly to the American people” — and not just about her relationship with Trump. She also wants to address the “intimidation and tactics that he, together with his attorney Michael Cohen, have used to silence me.”
“Rather than agree that the NDA is invalid, thus allowing me to talk, Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen have instead attempted to hide the facts from the public using a bogus arbitration proceeding and have threatened me with millions of dollars in damages if I tell the truth about what happened,” Daniels said on her site.
Trump and his attorney have threatened to sue her for $1 million each time she speaks out, Daniels alleged.
In launching the crowdfunding site, Daniels admitted that she doesn’t have the resources to fight alone. Donations on the site began to climb quickly Wednesday afternoon, jumping from about $15,000 to $30,000 in a little over an hour.
Daniels’ relationship with Trump first gained widespread notice when the Wall Street Journal revealed the $130,000 payout in January. Since then, Daniels has appeared on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” and has also has been booking featured dancing gigs at strip clubs across the country.
But the website The Blast noted that the mounting costs of suing the president, while running a PR campaign, has apparently become “too much to take on alone.”
Last week, Daniels said she had recorded an interview with CBS News’ “60 Minutes,” but it’s not known when it will air, likely due to the nondisclosure agreement and restraining order.
In an interview last week with CNN, Daniels’ attorney, Michael Avenatti, acknowledged that she had received million-dollar offers to tell her story, but he said that taking taking the money isn’t in the “spirit of what this is about.”
