Stormy’s claim that she was threatened
What happened
Adult film actress Stephanie Clifford told her story about her alleged affair with President Trump this week, telling CBS’s 60 Minutes that she was once threatened with harm if she ever spoke out about the relationship. Clifford, who performs under the name Stormy Daniels, told Anderson Cooper that she had unprotected sex with Trump once, after meeting him at a 2006 golf tournament. Five years later, shortly after giving an unprinted interview to Bauer Publishing about the alleged affair, the porn star was in a Las Vegas parking lot with her infant daughter when “a guy walked up on me and said to me, ‘Leave Trump alone. Forget the story,’” said Clifford, 39. “Then [he] looked at my daughter and said, ‘That’s a beautiful little girl. It’d be shame if something happened to her mom.’”
When interest in her story resumed during the 2016 presidential campaign, Clifford said, she felt pressured into signing a nondisclosure agreement in exchange for a $130,000 payment from Trump’s longtime lawyer, Michael Cohen. Cohen said he paid Clifford out of his own pocket, and both he and the White House deny her allegations of an affair. Clifford declined to tell 60 Minutes whether she had evidence of a relationship with Trump, but her lawyer, Michael Avenatti, suggested she did, tweeting a photo of a CD or DVD with the caption, “If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many words is this worth?” Avenatti has welcomed a legal battle with Trump, filing a motion in federal court to question the president and Cohen under oath about the alleged affair.