Trump calls sketch a ‘con job’
Tweet is the second time president has weighed in on porn actress’s case
WASHINGTON— U.S. President Donald Trump turned to Twitter early Wednesday to dismiss the sketch of the man a pornographic actress claims threatened her years ago on his behalf. It was just the second time the president weighed in on the subject after weeks of frenzied news media coverage.
“A sketch years later about a nonexistent man,” he said. “A total con job, playing the Fake News Media for Fools (but they know it)!”
The president mocked the sketch, which the pornographic actress, Stephanie Clifford (known as Stormy Daniels) released Tuesday. His tweet accompanied a post from another user, who said the man looked like Daniels’ former husband.
“A total con job,” Trump wrote in his first ever Twitter post related to Daniels, who has said she had an affair with Trump in 2006. In making fun of the sketch, Trump shared it with his more than 50 million Twitter followers. And, according to Daniels’ attorney, the president’s comments Wednesday could lead to a defamation claim.
Trump’s representatives have denied that the two had an affair. And the president’s advisers have cautioned him not to make public comments or post tweets about the matter.
Daniels says the man in the sketch threatened her in a Las Vegas parking lot in 2011 while she was with her infant daughter. “A guy walked up on me and said to me, ‘Leave Trump alone. Forget the story.’ And he leaned around and looked at my daughter and said, ‘That’s a beautiful little girl, it would be a shame if something happened to her mom,’ ” Daniels said in March during an interview aired on 60 Minutes.
Daniels and her attorney, Michael Avenatti, are offering a $131,000 (U.S.) award for the person who identifies the man in the sketch.
Daniels has said that Trump’s longtime lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, paid her $130,000 to keep quiet about an affair she says she had with Trump while he was married. The FBI has been investigating Cohen for bank fraud related to this payment and other matters.
Daniels filed a lawsuit in California last month in which she claims a nondisclosure agreement she signed shortly before the 2016 presidential election was null and void because Trump never signed it.