The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Stormy Daniels: Threats kept me quiet about alleged Trump affair
She says she took $130K because she feared for her family.
Stormy Daniels, the adult film actress who alleges that she had an affair with Donald Trump in 2006, says that she was threatened for attempting to tell her story publicly and accepted money through a Trump attorney to remain silent because she was scared for her family.
In a much-anticipated “60 Minutes” interview, Daniels said she believed she was doing the right thing when she accepted $130,000 from a company linked to Trump attorney Michael Cohen to stay quiet.
The hush agreeme nt allowed her to protect her career and her family, she said, according to a transcript of the show. And she was concerned
about her family’s safety after a scary episode in a Las Vegas parking lot in 2011, shortly after she first tried to sell her story to a tabloid magazine.
Daniels said she was taking her infant daughter out of the car to go to a fitness class when someone approached her. “A guy walked up on me
and said to me, ‘Leave Trump alone. Forget the story,’” Daniels told journalist Anderson Cooper. “And then he leaned around and looked at my daughter and said, ‘That’s a beautiful little girl. It’d be a shame if something happened to her mom.’ And then he was gone.”
Daniels said she didn’t know the man, and she provided no evidence to back up her claim, according to the transcript.
But she said she remained fearful over the years. After The Wall Street Journal reported on the $130,000 payment, Daniels signed what she now describes as a false statement denying the affair. In the “60 Minutes” interview, she said she signed the state- ment under pressure from her former lawyer and business manager.
“They made it sound like I had no choice,” she said. While there was not any threat of physical violence at the time, she said, she was worried about other repercussions. “The exact sentence used was, ‘They can make your life hell in many different ways,’” Daniels told Cooper.
“They being ...,” Cooper said.
“I’m not exactly sure who they were. I believe it to be Michael Cohen,” Daniels replied.
Cohen has denied threatening Daniels. In the run-up to the “60 Minutes” broadcast, Michael Avenatti, Daniels’ attorney, said repeatedly on cable news programs that his client would talk about threats she received because of her allegations against Trump.
Cohen could not be reached immediately for comment. He told Politico earlier this month he “never threatened her in any way, and I am unaware of anyone else doing so.”
The “60 Minutes” broadcast comes just 72 hours after former Playboy centerfold Karen McDougal spoke to CNN about her own alleged affair with Trump before he was elected president. McDougal has sued to break free of a confidentiality agreement that was struck in the months before the 2016 election, for which she was paid $150,000. McDougal says she signed her contract with the parent company of the National Enquirer.