Stormy Daniels’ meet with feds nixed
Stormy Daniels’ planned meeting with investigators Monday in the federal probe of President Donald Trump’s longtime personal attorney was abruptly canceled just hours before it was to start after an ugly, finger-pointing spat between prosecutors and the porn star’s lawyer over who tipped off the media to the sit-down.
Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, was supposed to meet with prosecutors from the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan in preparation for a possible grand jury appearance as they work to assemble a case against Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, Michael Cohen.
But after several news organizations, including The Associated Press, reported on the meeting, two prosecutors called Daniels’ lawyer, Michael Avenatti, and told him that they were concerned about media attention in the case, he said.
Avenatti offered to move the meeting to another location and reiterated that Daniels — who he says has been cooperating with prosecutors for months — was ready to go forward with the meeting, but they called back to cancel it, he said. The meeting has not been rescheduled, he said.
Daniels has said she had sex with Trump in 2006 when he was married, which Trump has denied. As part of their investigation into Cohen, prosecutors have been examining the $130,000 payment that was made to Daniels as part of a confidentiality agreement days before the 2016 presidential election.
“We believe canceling the meeting because the press has now caught wind of it is ridiculous,” Avenatti wrote in an email to Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicolas Roos. “We do not think it was any secret that at some point you were going to meet with my client.”
In response, Roos accused Avenatti of leaking the details of the meeting — an allegation that Avenatti said was “patently false” — and said it called into question Avenatti’s “commitment to maintaining the required confidentiality” of what is discussed in the meeting with Daniels.
“Such confidentiality is critical to the diligence, fairness, and integrity of this, and indeed all, investigations conducted by this Office,” Roos wrote. “This is not our preferred approach, and a step we are only rarely forced to take, but we are left with no choice.”