Stormy Daniels has now confirmed she will testify in Donald Trump’s trial on charges of paying her ‘hush money’ during the 2016 election campaign.
The porn star claims she was paid $130,000 to keep quiet about her sexual encounter with Trump while his wife Melania was pregnant with their son Barron, now 17.
The charges, the first criminal charges against the former president – relate to reimbursements made through an LLC to his former attorney and ‘fixer’ Michael Cohen.
Trump has said the payments were legitimate expenses, and not illegally disguised. Daniels, now 44, said on Sunday that she was readying to testify in court.
‘Obviously, things have been next-level crazy, since I am set to testify in, at this point in time, March — obviously, that can change any moment — in the hush money case,’ she said in an episode of her podcast, Beyond the Norm.
Trump was charged with 34 felony falsification of business records counts by a Manhattan grand jury, becoming the first former president to face criminal charges.
He has since been hit with federal charges in Florida, Georgia, and Washington DC.
Daniels has said she had a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006, at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe.
She said he invited her to dinner and they dined at his hotel suite, where he showed her a copy of a golf magazine with his picture on the cover.
‘And I was like, ‘Someone should take that magazine and spank you with it,” Daniels told the CBS program 60 Minutes in 2018.
‘So he turned around and pulled his pants down a little – you know had underwear on and stuff – and I just gave him a couple swats,’ Daniels said.
She said Trump asked her about herself and whether she would like to appear on his TV show Celebrity Apprentice.
‘He was like, ‘Wow, you – you are special. You remind me of my daughter.’ You know, he was like, ‘You’re smart and beautiful, and a woman to be reckoned with, and I like you. I like you,” Daniels said.
She said she excused herself at one point to use the bathroom and when she returned Trump was ‘perched’ on the edge of the bed.
‘I realized exactly what I’d gotten myself into. And I was like, ‘Ugh, here we go,’ said Daniels.
‘And I just felt like maybe … I had it coming for making a bad decision for going to someone’s room alone.’ She said the two had consensual sex.
Daniels said Trump made telephone calls to her over the following year and she met him again at his request in July 2007 at the Beverly Hills Hotel in Los Angeles to discuss her possible appearance on Celebrity Apprentice.
Daniels said he wanted to have sex again at the hotel but she declined.
She said Trump called her a month later to tell her he had not been able to get her booked on the show.
On October 28, 2016, in the waning days before the presidential election that Trump won, Daniels signed a non-disclosure agreement in which she pledged not to publicly discuss her relationship with him in exchange for a $130,000 payment, according to documents filed in Los Angeles federal court.
The pact was signed by Keith Davidson, her lawyer at the time, and Michael Cohen, then Trump’s personal lawyer and fixer.
The document included a spot for Trump’s signature, but he never signed it.
In 2018, after the Wall Street Journal reported on the payment to Daniels, Cohen stated publicly that he paid her using his own money and was not directed to do so by Trump.
