It’s Daniels v. Donald in Scuffle Over First Amendment Right to Dish Details About Doing Deed

Color photo of porn actress Stormy Daniels, fully clad, during a 2010 appearance at the Adult Entertainment Expo in 2010
A 2010 photo of Stormy Daniels, porn actress and champion of free speech ( flipchip/LasVegas.com via Wikimedia Commons)
As Donald Trump's lawyers scramble to keep Stormy Daniels silent about her alleged affair with the mogul-who-would-be-president, 60 Minutes readies a tell-all interview with the adult-film star

The First Amendment battle of the 1970s was the fight to publish the Pentagon Papers, but in the era of Trump, the donnybrook du jour is XXX actress Stormy Daniels’s ongoing scrap with POTUS over the right to reveal the sordid details of her dalliances with His Royal Orangeness.

The New York Times reports that Daniels, whose birth name is Stephanie Clifford, spoke to Anderson Cooper last week for a 60 Minutes segment that has yet to air, and that Trump’s attorneys might seek an injunction to prevent CBS from broadcasting the piece. Similarly, a recent BuzzFeed article claims that CBS has scheduled the interview to air Sunday, March 18, quoting sources avowing that the request for an injunction is in the works.

At issue is whether Daniels remains bound to a nondisclosure agreement (NDA) signed days before the November 2016 election, which involved $130,000 in hush money that was supplied to Daniels by Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen.

Cohen has claimed that the money came from his home equity line of credit, and that Trump was unaware of the payment. But the public advocacy group Common Cause suspects the payoff represents an illegal contribution to Trump’s presidential campaign. In January the group filed a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission over the matter.

Regardless, Daniels’s attorney Michael Avenatti argues in a lawsuit filed against Trump in Los Angeles County Superior Court on March 6 that the NDA is “null and void and of no consequence” because Trump never signed it. Avenatti contends the absence of his signature was intentional, because it would allow Trump to “publicly disavow any knowledge of the Hush Agreement.”

“I can definitely describe his junk perfectly, if I ever have to.” –Stormy Daniels, porn actress, referring to the penis of the POTUS

In the contract,  Daniels goes by “Peggy Peterson,” while Trump uses the pseudonym “David Dennison.” (Some have noted the similarity between “David Dennison” and the nom de porn Dirk Diggler, Mark Wahlberg’s character in the 1997 Paul Thomas Anderson film Boogie Nights.) Daniels signed the agreement under her birth name, but the line for Dennison’s signature is blank. The suit does not seek monetary damages, only a judge’s ruling that there never was a binding contract.

In Sunday’s New York Times story, Avenatti, who has litigated suits against Paris Hilton, the National Football League, and Jim Carrey, among others, explained his straightforward strategy versus the Trump camp.

“Our aim and our messaging is very simple: We’re going to shoot straight, we’re going to provide evidence and facts, and we are going to consistently advocate for the American people being able to make their own decisions as to who’s telling the truth and who’s lying to them,” Avenatti said. “[Daniels] wants a forum to tell her version of events and let the chips fall where they may.”

The Times followed up on Monday with a report that Daniels has offered to return the $130,000, wiring the money “into an account of Mr. Trump’s choosing by Friday,” if Trump agrees to let Daniels speak her piece. Avenatti gave Cohen a deadline of noon tomorrow to agree.

Per the Times:

Under the terms of the deal detailed in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, the contract ensuring Ms. Clifford’s silence would be “deemed null and void’’ once she returned the sum called for in her original contract.

Under Mr. Avenatti’s offer, Ms. Clifford would then be allowed to “(a) speak openly and freely about her prior relationship with the President and the attempts to silence her and (b) use and publish any text messages, photos and/or videos relating to the President that she may have in her possession, all without fear of retribution and/or legal liability for damages.”

The letter also seeks an agreement that neither Mr. Trump nor the shell company that Mr. Cohen used to pay Ms. Clifford, which he represents as a party to their October 2016 deal, would move to block the broadcast of an interview that Ms. Clifford taped with “60 Minutes” last week. The letter was also addressed to a lawyer working on the case with Mr. Cohen, Lawrence S. Rosen.

The legal jockeying is catapulting the Daniels–Trump saga to heights that would put Elon Musk’s Starman to shame. Trump’s efforts to keep the actress and director ball-gagged is an example of what Techdirt’s editor Mike Masnick calls “the Streisand effect”: i.e., the more legal beagles step in to obscure a sordid tale from the public eye,  the more widely the internet will disseminate it.

Which is more bad news for Trump. We already have Daniels’s detailed account of her initial, condom-free tryst with Trump in his penthouse suite at the top of Harrah’s Lake Tahoe, thanks to a 2011 interview that InTouch magazine published in Feburary.

In the InTouch piece, Daniels describes a subsequent encounter at the Beverly Hills Hotel that found The Donald waddling around in his PJs and obsessing about how much he loathes sharks as he watches the Discovery channel’s Shark Week. She also offers, “I can definitely describe his junk perfectly, if I ever have to.”

A police sketch of said apparatus may not be necessary, given that the confidentiality agreement Daniels signed mentions “certain still images and/or text messages which were authored by or relate to” Trump’s alter ego, David Dennison.

If images are in fact involved, we might finally solve one of the world’s most persistent mysteries: Is it true what they say about men with small hands?

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About Stephen Lemons

Stephen Lemons is an award-winning investigative journalist with more than 20 years of experience covering everything from government corruption to white-supremacist gangs. In addition to Front Page Confidential, his work has appeared in Phoenix New Times, the Los Angeles Times, Salon.com, and the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Report magazine.

10 comments

    1. The Democrats never run out of women who claim to have had some kind of sexual encounter with Republicans who win or on the road to winning. Let’s hope Stormy enjoys her new digs.

    2. This is a PORN actress and whore..she has a child ,who should be removed from her care. The child will live a nightmare…she should be ashamed of her behavior…This is why we have all these screwed up children
      .Her dialated pupils speaks drugs or alcohol..Her daughter has to live with other students laughing at her..SHE is a NASTY SLUT.

  1. This is garbage! Who cares about something that MAY have happened a decade ago between two consenting adults? She and the lawye are in it for publicity and money. I doubt there is anyone that’s this country who is pure as the driven snow and wouldn’t be blasted by the MSM.

  2. Daniel’s looks like a washed up porn star that is just trying to get some money from anyone that will listen to her. CNN and all of these chanel’s are just feeding into her little game she is playing by giving her big money to make their ratings go up.I could care less if it’s true or not. Frankly it’s none of the publics business even if it was true.The person I feel sorry for is Melania because she has to hear all of this phony rederick.You people make me sick!!!!!!!!

  3. Does this woman remember her daughter? What kind of future this child have? Her own mother called her a whore. Melania is a lady. She don’t participate in this kind of trash. Jackie Kennedy was a lady. She had dignity. She cared about her children. Trump never lied about himself when he said “he was a playboy”. I voted for him because I wanted exactly what Trump is doing. A Patriot in the WH. Trump raped nobody. Bill Clinton did in the WH. First adultery in the history.

  4. So now we have a known whore leading the communist left ..Is there still people who support this depraved un American party..kn…

  5. Frankly, I doubt every word steamy-storming Daniels had to say.
    This porn Star is far from credible in that she
    Cannot keep her story on track.
    Show your child some respect by transforming to an honorable life style: keep your mouth and your legs SHUT!!!

  6. Show a little respect for yourself and your family by transforming to a life style that is respectful and a good example to the child you care for…..
    In other words: please do yourself and your child and family a favor by keeping your legs and your mouth shut, steamy-storming Danials.
    Thank you.

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