Pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels revealed on 60 Minutes on Sunday night that she was threatened in 2011 to remain silent about her 2006 affair with Donald Trump.
Daniels — whose real name is Stephanie Clifford — told Anderson Cooper in the interview that she accepted a $130,000 payment to stay quiet about the affair because she feared for her safety and that of her young daughter.
SLIDESHOW: DONALD TRUMP’S 30 CRAZIEST TWEETS
Daniels said a man approached her in Las Vegas in 2011 and threatened her, a move that came after she sold her story about Trump for $15,000 to Bauer Publishing, which finally published the interview in its magazine InTouch early this year. Bauer had initially opted not to run the piece after the president’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, said he would sue.
Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter!
A week of political news in your in-box.
We find the news you need to know, so you don't have to.
“I was in a parking lot going to a fitness class with my infant daughter,” she told Cooper. “And a guy walked up on me and said to me, ‘Leave Trump alone. Forget the story.’ And he leaned around and looked at my daughter and said, ‘That’s a beautiful little girl, it would be a shame if something happened to her mom.’”
Daniels said she did not report the threat to the police, but that she ultimately struck a deal brokered by Cohen just days before the 2016 election because she feared for her safety and that of her family.
The 60 Minutes interview was so anticipated that several viewing parties were held and “Dark and Stormy” cocktail specials were served at bars around the country.
Though Daniels had already revealed some details about the affair, Sunday’s interview marked her first long, major television appearance to discuss the scandal. The porn star had already claimed that Trump never signed the non-disclosure agreement between the two.
Besides Daniels, two other women have filed lawsuits against Trump for their rights to speak out about incidents with the real estate mogul. A former Playboy “Playmate” named Karen McDougal also recently claimed she had an affair with Trump. McDougal — who also said Trump paid her — sold her rights to the company that owns The National Enquirer and spoke to Cooper on CNN on Thursday. Representatives for the president have denied he ever had an affair with either woman.
Both cases pose potentially serious legal consequences for Trump. Complaints have been filed with both the Federal Election Commission and the Justice Department that state the payments constitute illegal campaign contributions.
Additionally, a third woman named Summer Zervos, who was a contestant on The Apprentice, has filed a defamation lawsuit against Trump, claiming he groped her and then defamed her during the 2016 election.
Shortly after Daniels’ 60 Minutes interview aired on Sunday, a lawyer for Cohen, Brent H. Blakely, sent a cease-and-desist letter to the porn star’s new lawyer, Michael Avenatti. It accused him and Daniels of defaming Cohen in relation to the threat she claims to have received and demanding a public apology.
“Mr. 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,” Blakely wrote. “You and your client’s false statements about Mr. Cohen accuse him of criminal conduct and constitute, among other things, libel per se and intentional infliction of emotional distress.”
Daniels said that although she spoke to Trump several times, the two only had sex, unprotected, once. This occurred shortly after they met at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe in 2006. (McDougal has also said that she, too, was intimate with Trump during that event.) Trump was 60 at the time; Daniels was 27.
Daniels went on to reveal that Trump invited her to his hotel suite for dinner, and that he showed her a magazine cover with a photograph of himself on it.
“I was like, ‘Someone should take that magazine and spank you with it,”’ she said. “So he turned around and pulled his pants down a little — you know, had underwear on and stuff, and I just gave him a couple swats.”
The porn star added that Trump compared her to his daughter Ivanka Trump.
“He said that it was great,” she said, and told her he had had “a great evening, and it was nothing like he expected, that I really surprised him, that a lot of people must underestimate me — that he hoped that I would be willing to see him again, and that we would discuss the things we had talked about earlier in the evening.”
Daniels added that she still clearly remembers the face of the man who threatened her, and that she would be able to recognize him immediately. She recently took a lie-detector test and passed.
Cohen said he paid Daniels the $130,000 out of his own pocket.
Asked what she would tell the president if he was watching, she said, “He knows I’m telling the truth.”
A prominent transgender-rights activist disrupted a talk involving Rep. Nancy Mace (R-South Carolina) in Washington,…
After President-elect Donald Trump's victory, experts have expressed serious doubts about the future of the Biden…
https://youtube.com/shorts/YVrfbMZSVRE?feature=share US President-elect Donald Trump drew cheers as he arrived in Texas on Nov. 19 to watch…
After President-elect Donald Trump selected Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman, as his nominee for…
President-elect Donald Trump's announcement that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will be his pick for Department…
https://youtube.com/shorts/6CUvTmS87UM?feature=share President-elect Donald Trump arrived to cheers at an Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) event in…