Daniels says Trump lawyer defamed her
UNITED STATES: Stormy Daniels ramped up her legal battle against President Donald Trump yesterday, alleging in court that his personal attorney Michael Cohen defamed her by insinuating that she lied about an affair with Trump more than a decade ago.
Daniels amended her existing lawsuit against Trump, adding Cohen as a defendant in the pending case. The expansion of the lawsuit in a California federal court comes one day after the adult-film actress’s widely watched interview on 60 Minutes.
She has alleged that she had a sexual relationship with Trump in 2006 and signed a nondisclosure agreement shortly before the 2016 election. She says she received US$130,000 for her silence and has sued to break the agreement, alleging that it was invalid.
In an earlier filing in response to her lawsuit, Cohen said he has the right to seek as much as US$20 million from Daniels for breaches of the nondisclosure agreement.
On March 6, Daniels sued Trump and Essential Consultants, the limited liability company Cohen set up to use as a vehicle for a US$130,000 payment to Daniels. The amended complaint also names Cohen, whose picture has been brandished by Daniels’ attorney, Michael Avenatti, during television appearances in recent days. Besides accusing Cohen of defamation, the amended complaint broadens Daniels’s contention that the confidentiality agreement was illegal, because it lacked Trump’s signature.
The new complaint says the payment violated federal laws that impose limits on campaign donations and require those donations to be publicly reported.
Cohen’s US$130,000 payment amounted to an in-kind campaign contribution that exceeded those limits and was never reported, according to the amended complaint. The government watchdog group Common Cause has made the same argument in complaints pending before the Federal Election Commission and the Justice Department.
The nondisclosure agreement included a clause requiring any disputes to be settled in private arbitration, where the matter was being handled before Daniels’s lawsuit. Cohen and Trump have said in court filings that they intend to try to force the matter back into private arbitration.
The amended complaint argues that the clause requiring private arbitration is invalid. Secret arbitration would hide an allegedly illegal campaign contribution and violate ‘‘public policy by suppressing speech on a matter of enormous public concern’’, the complaint says.
The defamation claim against Cohen is based on his February 13 statement to the media in which he acknowledged that he had used his ‘‘own personal funds to facilitate a payment of US$130,000’’ to Daniels.
Cohen has denied that Trump had an affair with Daniels. In the February 13 statement, he suggested that the payment was spurred by rumours of an affair.
‘‘Just because something isn’t true doesn’t mean that it can’t cause you harm or damage,’’ Cohen said. ‘‘I will always protect Mr Trump.’’
The amended complaint argues that while Cohen’s statement did not directly accuse Daniels of lying about the 2006 affair, it defamed her by implying that she had lied.
The defamation claim against Cohen comes less than a week after a New York judge ruled that a defamation case against Trump filed by another woman in state court could proceed.
That lawsuit – brought by Summer Zervos, a former contestant on Trump’s reality-tv show The Apprentice – accuses Trump of forcibly kissing and grabbing her in 2007 at a Beverly Hills hotel. She says Trump defamed her when he accused her of fabricating the claim.
Trump’s attorneys sought to block the Zervos lawsuit, arguing that the president cannot be sued in state court and that his comments were protected by the First Amendment.
But New York Supreme Court Judge Jennifer Schecter – citing court precedent that cleared the way for the impeachment of President Bill Clinton in 1998 – wrote in her opinion that ‘‘no-one is above the law’’.
On Sunday night, local time, Daniels suggested on 60 Minutes that Cohen was possibly behind threats she had received.
After the show, Cohen’s attorney Brent H. Blakely demanded that Daniels apologise and stop making ‘‘false and defamatory statements.’’
The amended complaint does not refer to the allegation she made in the television interview.washington Post