Adult-film star Stormy Daniels will attend the testimony next month of President Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen, her lawyer Michael Avenatti announced Friday.
Cohen is scheduled to testify before the powerful House Oversight and Reform Committee on Feb. 7 and will face questions from Democrats on links between the Trump campaign and Russia and his admissions about payments to women alleging affairs with Trump.
Avenatti said it was “appropriate” because Cohen’s testimony “would have never happened but for” Daniels.{mosads}
Daniels was paid $130,000 by Cohen shortly before the 2016 presidential election to keep her quiet about an affair she alleges to have had with Trump in 2006.
Cohen pleaded guilty in November to lying to Congress about a proposed Trump Tower project in Moscow. He had also earlier pleaded guilty to violating campaign finance law, suggesting, without naming Trump, that he arranged the payments to Daniels and one other woman at the then-candidate’s direction.
He was sentenced to three years in federal prison and will voluntarily surrender to federal authorities on March 6.
Daniels filed a lawsuit against Trump and Cohen last year to void the nondisclosure agreement she signed as part of the hush-money deal.
The president did not sign the agreement and does not intend to enforce it, making the lawsuit pointless, according to his attorney Charles Harder.
Daniels told CNN’s Don Lemon in an October that she harbored “ill feelings” toward Cohen for a long time but felt “vindicated” by his guilty pleas.
“He admitted that I wasn’t lying and that Trump had ordered him to do this,” Daniels said. “In a way, I guess I forgive him.”
Trump has denied the alleged affair and the accusations Cohen made in his plea agreement.