AVN Hall of Famer Stormy Daniels filed a new lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court Wednesday, claiming that her previous attorney, Keith Davidson, conspired behind her back with Donald Trump’s “fixer” Michael Cohen to force her to appear on the Fox News Hannity program, where she was supposed to deny that she had had sex with Trump in 2006. As an exhibit to the lawsuit filing, Daniels and her current lawyer, Michael Avenatti, attached a series of text messages between Cohen and Davidson.
The lawsuit also states that Trump knew that Cohen and Davidson were communicating, according to a report by NBC News on Wednesday. Trump was aware that the pair were working together to quell the Daniels affair story, the lawsuit claims, but Daniels herself was never told about any of it.
The messages, which may be read online at this link, reveal Cohen referring to Davidson, who was supposed to be representing Daniels’ interests at the time, as opposed to Trump’s or Cohen’s, as “pal,” and at one point telling Davidson that he was “with flotus,” a reference to Melania Trump.
According to NBC, Cohen and Melania Trump were both present at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, on January 17, the date of the text message exchange. The lawsuit alleges—though without supporting documentation—that Cohen was there to warn the First Lady about the upcoming revelations concerning her husband and Daniels.
The text message exchange included with the lawsuit is dated January 17 of this year. Two days later, InTouch Magazine, a weekly celebrity tabloid, published an interview it had conducted with Daniels in 2011 but never made public until years later, in which she goes into detail about her sexual encounter with Trump.
In the January 17 text exchange, Cohen tells Davidson that he has “tentatively” booked Daniels to appear on Fox News host Sean Hannity’s program that night, but Davidson responds that Daniels can’t do it because she is “flying to L.A.,” but could do the interview the following night.
Cohen was apparently irritated by the schedule change, telling Davidson in a text, "By doing tomorrow you just create another news cycle instead of putting an end to this one.”
"These text messages show that the prior denials by Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen relating to what Mr. Trump knew and about the honesty of my client were absolute lies," Avenatti said after filing the suit, according to NBC. "There was a significant cover-up here as part of an attempt to deceive the American people and Mrs. Trump and we intend on getting to the bottom of it."
Also on Wednesday, Trump’s current Russia investigation lawyer and public spokesperson, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, attacked Daniels during an interview at a conference in Tel Aviv, Israel, according to an account in the Daily Mail newspaper, saying that Daniels is untrustworthy because she “sells...her body for money.”
“A woman who sells her body for sexual exploitation I don't respect. Tell me what damage she suffered. Someone who sells his or her body for money has no good name,” Giuliani said. “I don't believe her. Sue me, but her credibility is like that of a lawyer who gets thrown off a case. As a lawyer, I also got cases that weren't real.”
The interviewer at the conference quickly admonished Giuliani, according to the Mail, interjecting, “Mister, on this stage we respect women.”
When informed of Giuliani's comment, veteran adult actress Nina Hartley responded, "He demonstrates what I expect him to. It's a miserable, fact-free ad-hominem attack on Ms. Daniels, reeking of misogyny and sexism. It's a typical below-the-belt punch from a no-talent palooka who hopes to win by fighting dirty.
"There are honest sex workers and corrupt political hacks," she continued. "Ms. Daniels is a exemplary symbol of the former, while Giuliani clearly falls into the latter category. What damage has she suffered? She has been targeted by Trump's legion of scummy, alt-right Nazi thugs, including the one who threatened her in front of her child. She's guilty of nothing but telling the truth. Giuliani is a crooked shyster who, sooner than he thinks, may need legal counsel of his own for his role in undermining our constitutional government. He's certainly not one to point fingers or throw stones. #NoPardonForRudy."
APAC secretary Siouxsie Q also weighed in.
"These comments about Ms. Daniels perfectly exemplify the stigma that keeps our community so vulnerable to violence and exploitation," Q noted. "When lawmakers see members of our community as worth less than other American workers, they perpetuate policies that put our community at greater risk of assault, sex trafficking, and murder. This stigma also impedes our community's access to justice, as well as necessities such as housing and healthcare. So long as consensual adult sex work is criminalized and adult industry workers are seen with such disdain by the people elected to serve this country, they will continue to be treated as second class citizens in the eyes of the law.
"In March of this year, Congress passed a piece of legislation called SESTA/FOSTA, which aimed to combat sex trafficking, but in practice has only exacerbated the very problem it sought to address by driving sex workers into the streets where they are at far greater risk. Lawmakers need to understand that while sex workers may face deadly stigma in this country, we are still citizens, and we vote. When politicians make it clear that they do not stand with our community, we will be sure remember on election day."
Avenatti also slammed Giuliani for his smear of Daniels, in a post to his Twitter account.
“Mr. Giuliani is a misogynist. His most recent comments regarding my client, who passed a lie detector test and who the American people believe, are disgusting and a disgrace,” Avenatti wrote. “His client Mr. Trump didn’t seem to have any ‘moral’ issues with her and others back in 2006 and beyond.”
The new Daniels lawsuit is the third that she has filed in the ongoing case. In March, she sued Trump and Cohen to be released from the “hush agreement” she signed in exhange for a $130,000 payoff to keep quiet about the sexual encounter with Trump.
Then in April, she sued Trump for defamation after he slammed a forensic sketch of a man she says physically threatened her in Trump’s name as “a con job” and called the alleged assailant “non-existent.”
Photos by IowaPolitics.com/Gary/Wikimedia Commons
Article updated 6/8/18.
