Stormy Daniels must pay $300k to Donald Trump after losing defamation case appeal
“I will go to jail before I pay a penny,” the ad-u-lt film actor tweeted after an appeals court ruled against her.
Ad-u-lt film star Stormy Daniels has lost her appeal in her failed defamation suit against Donald Trump — leaving her owing almost $300,000 in legal fees to the former president.
"I will go to jail before I pay a penny," Daniels tweeted Monday after the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against her in the long-running case.
Trump hailed the ruling by the appeals court, which he often bashed as president, calling it "a total and complete victory and vindication for, and of me."
Michael Avenatti filed the defamation suit against Trump in 2018, when he was Daniels' lawyer. Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, said in a statement Tuesday that Avenatti had filed the suit "without my permission and against my wishes."
"Once it was filed, Trump's lawyers overwhelmed Avenatti and I was left the victim of an attorney's fee award," she added, calling it a "sad reality" that a "predator" like Trump "can openly brag about assaulting women and become president and be awarded money for his bad behavior."
Michael Cohen, then a lawyer for Trump, paid Daniels $130,000 before the 2016 presidential election to remain silent about a s*xual encounter she alleged she had had with the married Trump in 2006.
Trump has denied the encounter happened, and he did so again in his statement Monday. "As I have stated many times throughout the years, I never had an affair with Stormy Daniels, nor would I ever have wanted to," he said.
After news of the hush money payment became public, Daniels said she was menaced and warned to keep quiet about the allegation in 2011, when a man approached her while she was with her infant daughter in Las Vegas and told her to "leave Trump alone."
She said the man then looked at her daughter and said: "That's a beautiful little girl. It'd be a shame if something happened to her mom."
Daniels and Avenatti released a sketch of the man in 2018, which Trump mocked on Twitter.
