CYBERSPACE—The day after her 60 Minutes interview in which she discussed details of her sexual encounter with Donald Trump, Stormy Daniels and her attorney, Michael Avenatti, filed a new complaint accusing Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen of defamation, according to a report by the Washington Post.
Also on Monday, Avenatti revealed an email sent on February 22 from Cohen to Daniels’ prior attorney Keith Davidson. In that email, Cohen instructed Avenatti not to share any details of the case with any other lawyer—which Avenatti says was an attempt to keep him off of Daniels’ legal team.
In the interview, Daniels recounted an incident in 2006 in which she days she had sexual intercourse with Trump, an incident which—though Trump himself has neither publicly confirmed or denied—has been denied by Trump’s White House spokespersons.
"The president strongly, clearly and consistently has denied these underlying claims, and the only person who has been inconsistent is the one making the claims," spokesperson Raj Shah said on Monday.
However, even the spokespersons’ denials have been phrased only in general terms, and not directed at the specific details of any of Daniels’s allegations. But by denying that the affair ever too place, Cohen has defamed Daniels, according to Monday’s court filings.
Also, while Daniels’ original lawsuit claimed that the non-disclosure agreement she signed with Cohen regarding the affair, in exchange for a $130,000 hush money payment, is not valid because Trump himself failed to sign the deal, the new fling adds additional reasons for invalidating the contract.
The new filing claims that the $130,000 payment made by Cohen to Daniels was explicitly intended to influence the 2016 presidential election and therefore is not an enforceable contract. The payment was made less than two weeks prior to the election.
Trump and Cohen have filed a counter-claim saying that the case with Daniels should be decided in private arbitration rather than in court. But the new Daniels filing argues that to keep the case private would in effect be censoring an issue if “public policy by suppressing speech on a matter of enormous public concern.”
To defend against the defamation claim, Cohen would need to present definitive proof that the Daniels-Trump affair never took place.
