Trump seeks more than $20 million in damages from Stormy Daniels

LOS ANGELES — President Donald Trump is seeking more than $20 million in damages from the porn actress who is trying to void the confidentiality deal that requires her to keep quiet about her alleged affair with him, according to court papers filed Friday by his attorneys.

Stormy Daniels has breached her confidentiality agreement at least 20 times, the Trump legal team alleged in filings in federal court in Los Angeles.

Essential Consultants LLC, a Delaware company set up by Trump’s personal lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen, paid $130,000 to Daniels 11 days before the November 2016 presidential election in a deal that required her to never speak publicly about the alleged tryst with Trump.

Daniels, 38, sued Trump last week in state Superior Court in Los Angeles in an attempt to get the confidentiality agreement nullified. One of the reasons she cited is that Trump, who went by the alias David Dennison in the nondisclosure pact, did not sign it.

The new papers submitted by Trump’s legal team seek to shut down the state court lawsuit and transfer it to federal court. The filings were first reported by The New York Times.

One of the documents was filed by Beverly Hills lawyer Charles J. Harder, who identified himself as an attorney for Trump.

The president intends to join Essential Consultants in seeking an order compelling Daniels to submit to the secret arbitration proceedings mandated in the confidentiality agreement, Harder wrote.

Harder described Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, as “an adult-film actress and exotic dancer.”

Neither the White House nor Harder responded to messages seeking comment.

The nondisclosure agreement requires Daniels to pay any damages incurred for violating the deal directly to Trump, not to Essential Consultants.

Trump’s legal team stated in the federal court papers that the pact, dated Oct. 28, 2016, was between Essential Consultants and Daniels. The hush-money agreement is actually between Essential Consultants and/or David Dennison, on one side, and Peggy Peterson on the other. Peterson was the alias used for Daniels.

Daniels’ attorney, Michael Avenatti, called Trump’s court maneuver a bullying tactic to force the dispute into arbitration out of public view.

“The fact that a sitting president is pursuing over $20M in bogus ‘damages’ against a private citizen, who is only trying to tell the public what really happened, is remarkable,” he wrote on Twitter.

“Likely unprecedented in our history. We are NOT going away and we will NOT be intimidated.”