Heat on Trump over £92k ‘hush money’ to porn star
DONALD Trump faced fresh legal and political headaches last night after a porn star went on TV to make lurid claims about an affair with him.
Potentially most damaging to the US President are questions over whether an attempt to silence Stormy Daniels with $130,000 (£92,000) in hush money may have breached campaign finance laws.
The 39-year- old’s salacious account of her relationship with Mr Trump after they met at a 2006 golf tournament posed uncomfortable questions for the President and his wife Melania, to whom he was married at the time.
Mr Trump has denied Miss Daniels’s claims but her lawyer Michael Avenatti said yesterday she was ‘prepared to discuss intimate details’ about the President.
Miss Daniels alleged in her Sunday night interview with the CBS programme 60 Minutes that a man had approached her in a car park in 2011 and threatened her unless she stopped talking about the future US President.
Legal commentators said yesterday that if Mr Trump was found to have been involved in such intimidation, it could be grounds to impeach him.
The President also faces political fallout, with evidence that evangelical Christian women – a key source of electoral backing – are cooling in their support for him over the flurry of tawdry accusations about his private life. The White House reiterated yesterday that Mr Trump, 71, continues to deny having had an affair with Miss Daniels, saying she had no evidence to corroborate her claims.
‘The President strongly, clearly and consistently has denied these underlying claims,’ a spokesman said.
Referring to the fact that Miss Daniels had previously denied the affair, he added: ‘The only one who has been inconsistent is the one making the claims.’
Asked why the President would pay off anyone making false charges against him, the White House spokesman said: ‘False charges are settled out of court all the time.’
He added it would be ‘up to the President’ whether he responded personally to Miss Daniels’s claims, which her lawyer yesterday challenged him to do.
Mr Trump has uncharacteristically refused to comment publicly on Miss Daniels’s claims, or those of former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who says she had a ten-month affair with him over the same period.
He maintained his silence on the claims yesterday, but tweeted: ‘So much fake news. Never been more voluminous or more inaccurate.’
The fact that the TV interview was aired despite a confidentiality agreement Miss Daniels signed 11 days before the 2016 general election has prompted predictions that other women with similar gagging deals may now choose to ignore them.
Michael Cohen, a lawyer for the President, insists he paid Miss Daniels to stop talking about Mr Trump out of his own pocket.
She has filed a lawsuit saying the deal is invalid because the President never signed it.
Trevor Potter, a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, told the 60 Minutes programme the payment could represent an illegal unreported campaign contribution.
‘The payment of the money just creates an
enormous legal mess for Trump, for Cohen and anyone else who was involved in this in the campaign,’ he said.
If Mr Cohen made the payment on behalf of Mr Trump – an election candidate – it amounted to ‘a co-ordinated, illegal, in-kind contribution by Cohen for the purpose of influencing the election, of benefiting the candidate by keeping this secret’, said Mr Potter.
He added that whether or not Mr Trump repaid his lawyer the $130,000 hush money, it could still amount to an illegal campaign contribution.
Mr Avenatti claimed yesterday Miss Daniels had a ‘whole host of evidence’ about the alleged affair and her claims that Mr Trump knew of the deal to buy her silence. ‘This is not going away,’ said Mr Avenatti. ‘Mr Cohen and the President better come clean with the American people and they better do it quickly.’
He added they would prove that Mr Cohen’s claim that he paid Miss Daniels off his own bat is ‘false’ and that ‘at all times, Mr Trump knew about the $130,000… and with the assistance of Mr Cohen sought to intimidate and put my client under his thumb’.
On 60 Minutes, Mr Avenatti described the Trump camp’s treatment of his client as ‘thuggish behaviour from people in power’.
Mr Cohen has demanded a public apology for ‘defamatory’ claims by the porn star that he may have been behind an intimidation campaign that included physical threats to her.
Mr Cohen’s lawyer, Brent Blakely, warned Mr Avenatti that his client should stop making false and defamatory comments, ‘namely that he [Cohen] was responsible for an alleged thug who supposedly visited’ and threatened the porn star.
But Miss Daniels hit back last night, announcing that she is suing Mr Cohen. She claims he defamed her by suggesting she lied about her affair with Mr Trump.
Mrs Trump’s office has refused to answer questions and she remained in Florida when her husband returned to Washington shortly before the interview was aired