Amid publicity tour, porn star denies affair with Trump
Daniels ducked most questions about alleged affair on Kimmel’s show
New York: Adult film star Stormy Daniels, in the midst of a publicity tour fuelled by past allegations of a 2006 sexual relationship with a then- married Donald Trump, said in a statement on Tuesday the alleged affair never occurred. Keith Davidson, a lawyer for Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, confirmed the statement was authentic but didn’t offer any further details.
The statement came at a curious time for Clifford, who appeared after the president’s State of the Union address on ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live!.
In recent weeks she has changed production companies, given a television interview and promoted strip club appearances with a risque play on Trump’s “Make America Great Again,” campaign slogan.
Michael Cohen, Trump’s personal lawyer, has denied there was any affair. On Kimmel’s show, Clifford ducked most of his questions about the alleged affair by either remaining silent or cracking jokes. She addressed, vaguely, the legitimacy of the new statement.
Kimmel began by displaying a copy and comparing her signature on it to other examples. They didn’t match, he said, asking if she had signed it. “I don’t know, did I?” she said. “That doesn’t look like my signature, does it?”
Kimmel asked if that was an admission that the statement was written and released without her approval, which drew a smile, coy look and a giggle from Clifford.
The rest of the interview went on in the same vein, as Clifford skirted whether she had signed a non- disclosure agreement; if an In Touch magazine interview was accurate — “Not as it is written,” she replied — and if the magazine’s full transcript of her comments was accurate. When Kimmel started to read details of her alleged encounters with Trump, Clifford interrupted: “I thought this was a talk show, not a horror movie. Because this is a whole different pay scale.”
Clifford’s allegation, first made in 2011 and then again a month before the election, went mostly unnoticed until the Wall
Street Journal reported earlier this month that Cohen brokered a $ 130,000 payment to Clifford to keep her from publicly discussing it.
A week later, In Touch magazine printed a 5,000word interview it conducted with Clifford in 2011 but never published.