Her next ‘disappointment’: Court orders Stormy to pay $121k to Trump’s attorney!
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Donald Trump, a real estate tycoon in 2006, was 60 when he met adult film actress Stormy Daniels, 27.
When Trump became the 45th US President (2017-22), she came into the spotlight after she recounted her encounter in a 2018 book “Full Disclosure”, expressing ‘disappointment’ in her relationship with him.
Now, she has lost a defamation case against him. On Tuesday, the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals in California directed her to pay over USD 121,000 to Trump’s attorney.
The adult film star is already paying over USD 500,000 in court-ordered payments to Trump attorneys, the media reported on Wednesday.
The order was delivered on the same day, Tuesday, that a Manhattan court arraigned Trump on 34 charges related to alleged hush money payments to Daniels to cover up a purported affair between the two.
Trump, the first US President to face criminal charges, was charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records related to the alleged payments. He was arraigned, surrendered, and was briefly arrested in New York.
Trump attorney Harmeet Dhillon of the Dhillon Law Group shared a copy of the Californian court order on Twitter, congratulating the ex-President on this final attorney fee victory in his favor.
The civil litigation was officially unrelated to Trump’s arrest and charges filed against him in New York—but both involved Daniels, who was paid USD 130,000 in hush money during the 2016 presidential campaign to keep quiet about an affair, which Trump denied.
Daniels sued Trump in 2018, claiming that an unknown man threatened her in a parking lot to keep quiet about her alleged affair with Trump.
Dismissing the lawsuit in October 2018, federal Judge S James Otero said Trump’s statement was protected by the First Amendment.
“The Court agrees with Mr. Trump’s argument because the tweet in question constitutes ‘rhetorical hyperbole’ normally associated with politics and public discourse in the United States. The First Amendment protects this type of rhetorical statement,” Otero said.
He later ordered Daniels to pay nearly USD 293,000 in legal fees, and another USD 245,000 in fees after losing another appeal.
Stormy Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, had asked the appeals court to knock down another award. The court declined her request.
“Clifford’s argument that the fee request is unreasonable and excessive is not well-founded,” the court said.
“Trump’s attorneys reasonably spent the requested 183.35 hours preparing a motion to dismiss, a reply to the opposition to the motion, two extension motions, the answering brief, and the fee application,” it added.
In March 2022, Daniels said she would “go to jail” before paying a penny to Trump after a failed defamation suit filed by Daniels’ former lawyer, Michael Avenatti.
