Adult film actress Stephanie Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels, speaks to media along with lawyer Michael Avenatti in New York City, New York, US (Image: Reuters)
Adult film star Stormy Daniels ordered to pay former US President Donald Trump $121k in legal fees for defamation case following Trump’s indictment in hush money case
Adult film star Stormy Daniels was ordered to pay more than $121,000 for former US president Donald Trump’s legal fees in another case. Daniels was ordered by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on the same day the former president was indicted in a hush money payment case.
According to a report by news outlets CBS, lawyers from Harder LLP and Dhillon Law Group. The adult film star sued Trump for defamation after the former tweeted about her along with a photo of Daniels’ ex-husband next to a sketch of a man the adult film star commissioned which showed an unknown man she claimed threatened her and her daughter.
She claimed that after an interview with the In Touch Magazine in 2011, where she claimed she had an affair with Trump in 2006, an unnamed man approached her and appeared to threaten her. The man allegedly said: “Leave Trump alone. Forget the story… That’s a beautiful little girl. It’d be a shame if something happened to her mom.”
The man was allegedly referring to her daughter.
Trump later accused Daniels of lying and said the person who threatened her is “nonexistent”. He said Daniels’ attempt to sue him is a “total con job”.
The judge dismissed the case and asked Daniels to pay Trump’s legal fees in 2018 but she later argued that the fees were too high. The court, however, found her request “unreasonable” and not “well-founded”.
The Ninth Circuit ruled that the fees demanded by Trump were “reasonable”.
The ruling came hours after Trump appeared in the New York City courtroom in a separate criminal case brought by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.
The former president is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
The case claims Trump falsified business records when Trump reimbursed his former lawyer and “fixer” Michael Cohen for payments made to Daniels during the 2016 campaign.
According to CBS, New York classifies falsifying business records a misdemeanour but the charges can be upgraded to low-level felony if prosecutors can show the defendant committed the offence intending to commit or conceal another crime.
The former president was charged with felonies on the grounds that the conduct was intended to aid another crime, which in this case was violating election laws.
Read all the Latest News here
