Stormy Daniels reportedly threatened to go public with Trump affair allegations right before Election Day

(Image credit: Getty Images)

published 3 March 2018

Adult film star Stormy Daniels, who allegedly had an affair with President Trump around the time his third wife, first lady Melania Trump, gave birth to their son, threatened to go public with her story shortly before the 2016 election, The Washington Post reported Friday evening.

Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, arranged to pay Daniels $130,000 of his own money to buy her silence about a relationship he says did not occur. In late October of 2016, the payment had yet to arrive, and Daniels' attorney emailed Cohen to say his client "deems her settlement agreement canceled and void." The money eventually arrived a mere 12 days before the election, and Daniels kept silent until the story of the alleged affair broke in January.

Subscribe to The Week

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

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

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.

Explore More

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.