Stormy Daniels repeats story of threat
Stormy Daniels, the adult film star who alleged an affair with Donald Trump years before he took office, sharply defended her credibility Tuesday while releasing a sketch of a man she says threatened her not to speak out about Trump years earlier.
Daniels’ story about a man threatening her in a Las Vegas parking lot in 2011, which she first disclosed during a widely seen “60 Minutes” interview, prompted quick pushback from the president and Michael Cohen, his personal attorney, who in 2016 negotiated the $130,000 settlement with Daniels requiring her silence.
During an appearance Tuesday on ABC’s “The View,” Daniels and her attorney, Michael Avenatti, made public a sketch of the man she said approached her shortly after she sought to sell her story about a brief affair with Trump to a tabloid magazine.
Avenatti said he is offering a $100,000 reward for information leading to the man’s apprehension. After Daniels’s “60 Minutes” interview, representatives for Trump and Cohen said both men do not believe there was any threat.
Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, described her overall campaign to speak out about Trump as being necessary to vouch for her integrity.
“It is my chance to defend myself and to make people realize how and why this happened so I can tell my side,” Daniels said. She also pushed back at the suggestion that people might question her story about Trump because of her profession, saying: “I think that what I do for a living should not matter.”
She defended not telling the police about the threat, saying that if she had, her story about Trump would’ve emerged “and then the whole world would’ve known.”