Internal police emails obtained by a local news outlet appear to show that police in Columbus, Ohio, planned the arrest of Stormy Daniels on July 11 in advance, according to a report by The Fayette Advocate, an online news organization covering Fayette County, Ohio.
The site reported on Wednesday that “a whistleblower from inside the Columbus Police Department” provided emails that show “news clippings discussing Daniels’ planned appearance in Columbus, pictures of Daniels with President Donald Trump, videos of her dancing, and even a map to the club where she would be performing, all sent days before she would pull into town on her tour bus.”
Daniels, as AVN.com reported, was charged with three misdemeanor counts of violating an Ohio law that prohibits nude or semi-nude performers from touching customers—a law that rarely if ever had been previously invoked. The charges were dropped the next day.
Police said that Daniels was swept up in an ongoing undercover investigation of sex trafficking in area strip clubs, but the Fayette Advocate report says that the internal emails contradict that claim.
“The emails definitely show that the police lied about it being a prostitution and human trafficking mission,” the site quoted its unnamed “whistleblower” as saying.
Leaked emails from undercover vice squad officer Shana Keckley, one of the cops involved in the arrest of Daniels, also show her gloating over the bust of the performer, who skyrocketed to national prominence seemingly overnight in March when she filed a lawsuit against Donald Trump, seeking to be freed from a “hush agreement” over a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006.
“I got the elements….we arrested Stormy this morning, she is in jail,” Keckley wrote in one email, referring to the “elements” necessary to justify an arrest. In another she bragged that the arrest was “all over CNN,” and in yet another she told a fellow cop, “You’re Welcome!!!!!….Thank me in person later.”
Shortly after the arrest took place, Daniels’ lawyer in her civil lawsuit, Michael Avenatti, voiced suspicion that the bust may have been “politically motivated” and “a set-up.” As AVN.com reported, social media accounts linked to another officer involved in arresting Daniels, Steve Rosser, contained numerous memes supporting Trump, and that his few Twitter “follows” included two ardently pro-Trump Fox news hosts.
In a Twitter post on Wednesday, Avenatti called the allegations in the Fayette Advocate story “extremely disturbing.”
“I intend on getting to truth and the bottom of who ordered Stormy Daniels arrested and why,” Avenatti said. “It appears that I was correct when I stated it was politically motivated.”
Photos via Michael Avenatti Twitter, Gary/Wikimedia Commons
