Stormy Daniels is suing Trump
Adult-film actress Stormy Daniels filed a lawsuit against President Trump on Tuesday, claiming that the deal she made to keep silent on details of a relationship with Trump is invalid. While Daniels and Trump's personal attorney Michael Cohen signed a non-disclosure agreement, the suit says, Trump did not.
The suit, obtained by NBC News, alleges that Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, had an intimate relationship with Trump that lasted from the summer of 2006 "well into the year 2007," with trysts taking place in Lake Tahoe and the Beverly Hills Hotel. Appended to the suit are two agreements: A "hush agreement" that refers to Daniels as "Peggy Peterson" and Trump as "David Dennison," and a side letter agreement revealing that Peterson is Clifford and Dennison is Trump.
The hush agreement states that $130,000 will be paid to the trust account of Clifford's attorney and in exchange, Clifford would stay mum on the relationship and refrain from sharing texts or photos from Trump. Both documents, NBC News reports, have blank spaces where "DD" was supposed to sign; Daniels and Cohen signed them just days before the election, on Oct. 28, 2016. The suit asks the Los Angeles County Superior Court to declare that both agreements "were never formed, and therefore do not exist," and also alleges that Cohen has been trying to intimidate Daniels into silence, with his last attempt on Feb. 27.
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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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