(Washington Post) - Stormy Daniels, the porn star who was paid to keep quiet about her affair with Donald Trump, has sued the president, alleging that her nondisclosure agreement before the 2016 election is void because he did not sign it.
In the lawsuit filed on Tuesday (March 6) in Los Angeles Superior Court, Daniels, 38 - whose real name is Stephanie Clifford - said she wanted to go public with the story of her affair with Trump, 71, one decade earlier in the weeks leading up to the election.
The suit 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 US$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.
Daniels has said she met the future president at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe in July 2006. He was a reality television star whose wife, Melania, had recently given birth to their son, Barron; she was a porn star working at a booth promoting Wicked Pictures, an adult-film company.
Daniels accepted an invitation from Trump to ride around the lakefront course in his golf cart.
"That was actually my first time on a golf course, and when you're riding around with Donald Trump in an Escalade golf cart during your first time out on a course, I'd say I was doing all right," she told Adult Video News, a trade publication.
Two other media outlets recently revealed that she had shared her account of a romantic relationship. Slate reported in January that in the months leading up to the 2016 election, Daniels had told the outlet about the affair and said she was paid in exchange for her silence.
Years earlier, in May 2011, she gave a lengthy interview to In Touch magazine. Jordi Lippe-McGraw, the reporter who spoke with Daniels, told The Post that the transcript as published by the magazine last month accurately reflected the interview.
Citing former employees of the tabloid's publisher, the Associated Press has reported that In Touch killed the story after Cohen threatened to sue.
Blogger Nik Richie who runs a gossip site, thedirty.com, reported on Trump's alleged infidelity with Daniels in October 2011, five months after the In Touch interview.
Daniels' lawyer later threatened him with a cease-and-desist order, Richie recently wrote. The payment was routed through a bank account controlled by Davidson.
