Stormy Daniels has confirmed she will testify in the trial of Donald Trump 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 relationship 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 refunds made through an LLC to his former lawyer and “fixer” Michael Cohen.
Trump has said the payments were legitimate expenses and not illegally disguised. Daniels, now 44, said Sunday she was ready to testify.
Stormy Daniels and Donald Trump are pictured in 2006 when they met at a golf tournament in Lake Tahoe. He had married Melania the year before and she was pregnant with Barron, now 17
The porn star, now 44, will testify against Trump in March. She is seen addressing the Oxford Union in May 2023
“Obviously, things have been crazy at the next level as I’m currently testifying in March — that could obviously change at any time — in the hush money case,” she said on an episode of her podcast, Beyond the Norm.
Trump was charged by a Manhattan grand jury with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, 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 ate in his hotel suite, where he showed her a copy of a golf magazine with his photo on the cover.
“And I was like, ‘Someone should take that magazine and beat you up with it,’” Daniels told the CBS program 60 Minutes in 2018.
“So he turned around and pulled his pants down a little bit – you know, he had underwear on and stuff – and I just gave him a couple of whacks,” Daniels said.
The Louisiana-born porn star will be seen on British breakfast television in May 2023
She said Trump asked her about herself and whether she would like to appear on his TV show Celebrity Apprentice.
“He said, ‘Wow, you, you’re special. You remind me of my daughter.” You know, he said, ‘You’re smart and beautiful and a force to be reckoned with, and I like you. I like you,’” Daniels said.
She said that at one point she excused herself to go to the bathroom and when she returned, Trump was “sitting on the edge of the bed.”
‘I realized exactly what I had gotten myself into. And I was like, ‘Ugh, here we go,'” Daniels said.
“And I just felt like maybe… I expected it because I made the bad decision to go into someone’s room alone.” She said the two had consensual sex.
Daniels said Trump called her 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 is seen speaking outside court with her then-attorney, Michael Avenatti, on April 16, 2018
Daniels said he wanted to have sex again at the hotel, but she refused.
She said Trump called her a month later to tell her he had been unable to book her for the show.
On October 28, 2016, in the final days before the presidential election that Trump won, Daniels signed a nondisclosure agreement in which she promised not to publicly discuss her relationship with him in exchange for a $130,000 payment, according to documents filed in Los Angeles. Angeles Federal Court.
The pact was signed by Keith Davidson, her lawyer at the time, and Michael Cohen, Trump’s personal lawyer and fixer at the time.
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 publicly stated that he paid her with his own money and that he was not instructed to do so by Trump.