Stormy Daniels’ legal funding raises transparency questions

LOS ANGELES — Stormy Daniels has raised nearly a half-million dollars to fund her lawsuit against President Donald Trump, relying on contributions from a crowdfunding site. Her lawyer has repeatedly pointed to the public site as evidence that he and his client aren’t bankrolled by Trump’s political foes.

But the truth is, no one knows precisely who is funding the effort.

The more than 14,000 donations have been made mostly anonymously in amounts ranging from $10 to $5,000. Through Monday, Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, and her attorney, Michael Avenatti, raised more than $490,000 on CrowdJustice.com, a crowdfunding site dedicated to helping people raise money for legal fees. About $100,000 arrived in the last week after Avenatti released documents about payments Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, received from private companies seeking information about the president’s beliefs on various issues.

The target for donations is $850,000, which Avenatti called a “realistic and reasonable target based on what we know right now.”

Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School, said it’s unusual but “not totally unheard of” for a lawyer to seek online donations to cover legal costs.

“It does bring up some ethical concerns in terms of who is actually giving this money and whether they will try to exert influence,” said Levinson, who also is president of the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission.

Crowdjustice.com donors can choose whether to share their names with the person seeking funds. The site displays donations with either a first name or as anonymous donor.

Avenatti has bristled at claims from some Trump supporters that his pay for work on the case comes from an organized an effort to oust Trump.

“We have no ethical concerns whatsoever,” Avenatti told The Associated Press. “I find this fascination with who is paying my client’s legal bills to have passed the line of absurdity at this point. We have been very, very clear when answering these questions. Who is paying Mr. Trump’s and Mr. Cohen’s legal bills? Do we know?”

CrowdJustice said the average donation for Daniels’ case was $34, which is “consistent with average donation amounts across the platform.” Only 24 of the donations have been over $1,000, Avenatti said.