The Columbus, Ohio, city council on Monday voted to give the green light for the city to hand over $450,000 to AVN Hall of Famer Stormy Daniels to settle a lawsuit over her arrest at a strip club there in July of 2018, the Columbus Dispatch newspaper reported. Daniels sued the city for $2 million over the bust, which was ruled “improper” by the Columbus Police Department’s own investigation.
But in September, Daniels agreed to take the settlement deal. Daniels alleged in the lawsuit that she was set up in a “sting” operation by the Columbus vice squad who were out to get her because certain officers there were supporters of Donald Trump, and she was then in the midst of a high-profile lawsuit against Trump.
Monday was a bad day for the Columbus PD. The council also authorized a $300,000 payment to a former policewoman who was dismissed from the force during her training period. The policewoman, Sarah Wheeler, said that male officers had demanded that she perform a table dance for them.
In a third settlement, the city agreed to pay more than $30,000 to the passenger in a car that was rammed from behind by a police vehicle.
According to the Dispatch report, the total amount paid to Daniels and the others on Monday was the equivalent of 89 cents shelled out by every Columbus resident, adults and children. But the Columbus city attorney’s office had told the council that if any or all of the cases went to trial, the city could be on the hook for hundreds of thousands dollars more.
“It’s time that we improve some practices,” Elizabeth Brown, the council’s president pro tempore, said at the Monday meeting.
Just because the council voted to approve the $450,000 expenditure to settle her case doesn’t mean that Daniels and her lawyers will see all of that cash. As AVN.com reported, Trump has filed a claim saying that almost $300,000 of that money belongs to him, to pay attorney's fees in a defamation lawsuit that Daniels filed against him last year, but which was thrown out by a federal judge.
Daniels is battling Trump’s claim, saying that she is appealing the judge’s dismissal of the defamation lawsuit.
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