Former US President Donald Trump got indicted on criminal charges arising from allged hush money paid to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. It happened in 2016 before the US elections took place.
Daniels had said that Trump had a sexual encounter with her in 2006, the same year he married his third wife Melania. Back then Trump was known more for the reality show The Apprentince. The former US President denied having any relationship with Stormy but revealed that payments were made to stop her “false and extortionist accusations.”
According to reports, Daniels had claimed that she had been introduced to Trump in July 2006 at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe. She had alleged that he had invited her to dinner, which they had in his hotel suite. During the dinner, Trump had shown her a copy of a golf magazine with his picture on the cover. Speaking to the CBS program “60 Minutes” in 2018, Daniels had said, someone should take that magazine and spank him with it. She had further stated that Trump had turned around, pulled his pants down slightly, and asked her to have a go at him. She later excused herself to the bathroom and when she returend she saw Trump perched at the egde of the bed, the two later had consensual sex.
Daniels also said that Trump had contacted her over the following year, she thought it was for her appearance on the show Celebrity Apprentice. She had said that he had requested to have sex with her again at the Beverly Hills Hotel, but she had declined. Later, he had called her to inform her that he was unable to get her booked on Celebrity Apprentice.
It was reported that on October 28, 2016, Daniels had signed a non-disclosure agreement, promising not to discuss her relationship with Trump publicly, in exchange for a payment of $130,000. The document was signed by Keith Davidson, her lawyer at the time, and Michael Cohen, Trump’s then-personal lawyer and fixer. Although there was a space for Trump’s signature on the agreement, he never signed it. In 2018, Cohen had publicly stated that he had paid Daniels using his own money and not at Trump’s direction. Daniels had sued Trump and Cohen to have the agreement invalidated. However, Trump’s lawyers had acknowledged that he did not sign the non-disclosure agreement and would not seek to enforce it. Her lawsuit was dismissed as the matter was resolved.
Daniels had filed a defamation lawsuit against Trump in federal court in 2018 over a tweet in which he accused her of a “con job” after she had talked about an alleged sexual relationship with him. The lawsuit had been dismissed by a Los Angeles-based federal judge who had decided that Trump’s remarks were not defamatory and were protected by the US Constitution’s First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech. The judge’s decision had been upheld on appeal, and the US Supreme Court in 2021 declined to review the matter.
Daniels had claimed that an unidentified man had approached her and her infant daughter in a Las Vegas parking lot in 2011 and threatened her after she had agreed to talk about her relationship with Trump in a media interview. She had released a sketch of the man in 2018. Trump had responded on Twitter, stating that the sketch was a “total con job” and that the media was being played for fools.
