Stormy Daniels sues Trump lawyer for defamation

Adult-film star Stormy Daniels on Monday accused Michael Cohen, President Trump’s personal attorney, of defamation, amending her lawsuit against Trump.

Daniels had been locked in a legal battle with Trump, seeking to dissolve a nondisclosure agreement she and Cohen signed more than a decade ago. She says the deal is not valid because Trump never signed it himself.

The lawsuit now alleges that Cohen defamed Daniels by suggesting that she is lying about her alleged 2006 affair with Trump. The suit specifically points to a statement Cohen made last month: “Just because something isn’t true doesn’t mean that it can’t cause you harm or damage,” he said. 

{mosads}Cohen has also said he used “own personal funds to facilitate a payment of $130,000” to Daniels for her silence on the matter weeks before the 2016 presidential election. 

A hearing for the lawsuit Daniels filed against Trump and Cohen’s company to dissolve the nondisclosure agreement has been set for July 12 in Los Angeles County Superior Court. 

The change to the lawsuit comes just one day after Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, defied her nondisclosure agreement and spoke publicly about the alleged affair in an interview for “60 Minutes.”

Daniels revealed various details of her relationship with Trump in the interview, including an incident in 2006 when she allegedly asked Trump to pull down his pants so she could spank him with a magazine bearing his face on the cover, to which Trump agreed.

She also said she was threatened to stay silent about the affair in 2011 when an unidentified man came up to her in a Las Vegas parking lot after she had agreed to discuss her version of the alleged affair to a magazine.

“Leave Trump alone. Forget the story,” Daniels said the man told her.

Daniels also claims the man looked at her young daughter and said, “It’d be a shame if something happened to her mom.”

Cohen’s attorney Brent Blakely demanded that Daniels apologize for making defamatory statements immediately after the show aired on Sunday. 

Blakely said Cohen “had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with any such person or incident, and does not even believe that any such person exists, or that such incident ever occurred.”

The White House has denied Trump’s involvement with Daniels. 

“The president strongly, clearly and consistently has denied these underlying claims. The only one who has been inconsistent is the one making the claims,” White House deputy press secretary Raj Shah said on Monday. “The president doesn’t believe that any of the claims Ms. Daniels made in the interview are accurate.”

“False charges are settled out of court all the time. You’d have to ask Michael Cohen about the specifics,” Shah said when asked why the president was involved in the payment days before the election.