Stormy Daniels wants Trump to testify in litigation over sexual affair
The lawyer for the porn actress requests to be able to question the president and his lawyer regarding the pact of silence they reached
The Stormy Daniels saga does not stop. The porn actress's lawyer asked this Wednesday that the US president, Donald Trump, give a judicial statement on the litigation for the alleged sexual affair he had with the woman between 2006 and 2007. The lawyer, Michael Avenatti, wants to be able to question under oath Trump and his lawyer Michael Cohen regarding a deal in which the actress received money in 2016 in exchange for keeping quiet about the romance.
The request was filed with the federal court for the Central District of California, which is handling the case. On Monday, Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, sued Trump's attorney for defamation after he accused her of lying about the secrecy agreement they reached.
It is a political and legal soap opera that occurred a decade ago but that questions Trump's honesty and strengthens the perception of permanent scandals surrounding his presidency. Another woman, a former Playboy model, also claims to have had an affair with Trump around the same time. Trump's environment has denied both relationships.
The Stormy case brings to mind Bill Clinton's legal troubles in 1998 when he was president. The democrat's sexual conduct and his judicial statements ended up leading to impeachment proceedings against him, from which the Senate exonerated him. He was charged with perjury and obstruction of justice. One woman, Paula Jones, has accused Clinton of sexual harassment in the past. The president had to give a judicial statement in that case and was also asked about the information that, as president, he had had a sexual affair with Monica Lewinsky, a White House intern. In her testimony, Clinton denied having a sexual relationship. But later, a Lewinsky gown featuring a Clinton sperm sample was released, leading to the Democrat being charged with lying under oath.
The agreement of silence
Both Trump and Daniels' circles admit that Cohen paid the porn actress $ 130,000 in the run-up to the 2016 presidential elections in exchange for not publicly disclosing her sexual affair with the real estate mogul. Daniels says that the relationship began when the Republican had recently married his wife Melania and Barron, their son, had been born.
After making a pilgrimage on American television, Daniels went on the offensive in early March. She filed a lawsuit in a Los Angeles court demanding the nullity of that agreement because she considers it invalid as Trump did not sign it. The president's lawyers counterattacked with a request for 20 million dollars in compensation to the actress whom they accuse of having broken the pact.
Last Sunday, Daniels went one step further and gave her first television interview in which she spoke openly about her alleged affair with Trump. In the CBS program 60 Minutes, she claimed that Trump's entourage physically threatened her in 2011 in front of her young daughter in a Las Vegas parking lot so that she would "leave him alone." At that time, the actress had given an interview to InTouch magazine in which she recounted an affair with Trump, but that conversation was never published. She only did it a few months ago.
