Porn star Stormy Daniels: the latest in 200 years of US presidential sex scandals

Porn star Stormy Daniels says she’s free to tell her story now that Donald Trump’s lawyer has admitted paying her off, even if the president is still denying the tryst.

Stormy – real name Stephanie Clifford – pocketed $130,000 (£92,500) from Donald Trump’s personal attorney just before the 2016 election. Her manager told The Associated Press that the adult film star believed the admission of a payoff invalidated her non-disclosure agreement, freeing Clifford to tell all.

Whether the romp is true or not, it certainly isn’t the first sex scandal to reverberate through the White House. Shocking claims – followed by vigorous denials – have been echoing through the corridors of power for centuries.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

The Week examines two centuries of presidential passion:

President Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809)

Jefferson was accused of fathering six children with Sally Hemings, his slave. “Most” historians believe the story, according to a Thomas Jefferson Foundation Research Committee Report published in 2000. Archaeologists recently excavated an area in Jefferson’s plantation home believed to have been Hemings’s living quarters. They were next to Jefferson’s room, according to the Daily Mail.

James Buchanan (1857-1861)

James Buchanan, the country’s only bachelor president, lived with William Rufus King for a decade. Buchanan and King were “apparently the talk of the town”, Salon says. Andrew Jackson referred to them as “Miss Nancy and Aunt Fancy”, according to Pink News.

Grover Cleveland (1885-1889, 1893-1897)

The Buffalo Evening Telegraph revealed that Maria Halpin had given birth to a son, Oscar, in 1874 with the surname Cleveland. She was spirited away to a mental asylum and the child was adopted by another family, according to the Smithsonian magazine. Cleveland acknowledged Oscar’s paternity, prompting his opponents to adopt the chant, “Ma, ma, where’s my pa?” When Cleveland won the election, the chant was answered by “Gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha!”

Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921)

The 28th president had “hot blood” in his veins, according to New Jersey magazine. Historians often pore over letters to his constant “pen pal” Mary Peck – a divorcee socialite he met in Bermuda – and question whether she was Wilson’s lover.

Warren Harding (1921-1923)

Harding reportedly had two affairs with Carrie Phillips and Nan Britton. Britton wrote a best-selling book in 1927 called The President’s Daughter, claiming that Harding fathered their child while he was a US senator. In August 2015, DNA tests confirmed Harding was the father of Elizabeth, The Guardian says.

John F. Kennedy (1961-1963)

“If I don’t have sex every day, I get a headache,” Kennedy would remark to anyone who would listen, including former British prime minister Harold Macmillan, the New York Post writes. Kennedy biographer Robert Dallek describes JFK as a “compulsive womaniser” who was linked to numerous women including actress Marilyn Monroe. Mimi Alford, then a 19-year-old White House intern, openly discussed their tryst in her book Once Upon a Secret: My Affair with President John F. Kennedy.

Bill Clinton (1993-2001)

“I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky”, Bill Clinton famously declared in 1998. But Linda Tripp had secretly recorded telephone conversations with her friend Monica Lewinsky and they had discussed Lewinsky’s affair with Clinton between 1995 and 1997, Newsweek reports. The scandal led to Clinton’s impeachment by the House for perjury but the president was acquitted in the Senate. In a plea bargain to avoid another trial, Clinton’s law licenccompe in Arkansas was suspended for five years.