Stormy Daniels filed a second lawsuit against Donald Trump on Monday, this time hitting Trump for, the complaint says, defaming her and damaging her reputation when he posted an April 18 message to his Twitter account in which he called a forensic sketch of a man that Daniels says threatened her a “con job” and said that the sketch depicted “a non-existent man.”
Daniels, in interviews with 60 Minutes and ABC’s The View has described a 2011 incident in a Las Vegas parking lot in which she says a man approached her and threatened that “something” might happen her to her if she did not “leave Trump alone.”
On her April 17 appearance on The View Daniels and her lawyer Michael Avenatti released the sketch, by top forensic artist Lois Gibson. That sketch may be seen at this link, and depicts the man whose appearance Daniels says “is burned in my memory.”
According to the new lawsuit filed in the Southern District of New York, Daniels claims that she suffered financial damages from Trump’s allegedly defamatory tweet of at least $75,000. Read the entire complaint at this link.
The financial damages suffered by Daniels came in part because she received death threats and other threats to he physical safety following Trump’s tweet, and has “had to retain the services of professional bodyguards and other protective services to ensure her personal safety,” the complaint says.
"Mr. Trump used his national and international audience of millions of people to make a false factual statement to denigrate and attack (Ms. Daniels)," the complaint reads.
“We filed this lawsuit against Mr. Trump for his recent irresponsible and defamatory statements about my client (Stormy Daniels),” Aventti wrote Monday on his own Twitter account. “He is well aware of what transpired and his complicity. We fully intend on bringing it to light.”
Daniels' original lawsuit against Trump and his personal “fixer” Michael Cohen, seeking to be released from the “hush agreement” preventing her from discussing her alleged 2006 sexual encounter with Trump, was filed on March 6 in a Los Angeles court.
The SDNY federal court is also the site of the ongoing criminal case against Cohen for offenses that have not yet been publicly revealed, but are believed to be at least partly related to the Daniels “hush money” payment of $130,000 made by Cohen days before the 2016 presidential election.
"Regardless of who you are or what position you hold, you are not permitted to fabricate statements in an effort to deceive people. There are consequences for doing that," Avenatti told NBC News. Trump had made no comment on the defamation lawsuit as of 3 p.m. Eastern Time on Monday.
Trump also faces a defamation lawsuit from Summer Zervos, a contestant on Trump’s former reality TV competition show The Apprentice. Zervos in 2016 accused Trump of sexually assaulting her, and she says that Trump defamed her when, on the campaign trail, he blasted her and all of the numerous other women accusing Trump of sexual misconduct “horrible, horrible liars.”
On Friday, Judge S. James Otero in the ordered a 90-day delay in the original Daniels lawsuit, saying that there could be significant overlap between that civil case and Cohen’s criminal case. Cohen vowed to invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination if he were forced to answer question in the Daniels lawsuit.
Photos: Wikimedia Commons / ABC TV Screen Capture
