A federal judge on Friday will decide whether or not to let Donald Trump and his personal attorney and “fixer” Michael Cohen put the lawsuit filed against them by Stormy Daniels on hold for the next three months, according to a report by the Politico news site. Daniels’ lawyer, Michael Avenatti, said that he and Daniels would appear in the federal courtroom Friday to “vehemently argue against” Cohen's and Trump’s attempt to stall the lawsuit.
Avenatti also said in a CNN interview Wednesday that he planned to update Daniels’ lawsuit to include a claim of defamation against Trump himself.
Daniels on Tuesday released a forensic sketch of a man she claims threatened her with harm unless she agreed to “leave Mr. Trump alone.” The following day, Trump posted a message to his Twitter account calling the sketch “a total con job” and claiming that the man depicted in the sketch was “non-existent.”
"There's no question he defamed my client,” Avenatti said on CNN. “He's calling my client a liar and basically stating that she made this up and it's a con.”
Avenatti and Daniels have already filed a defamation claim against Cohen, asserting that the Trump lawyer effectively slandered her by implying that she had fabricated her claim of having sex with Trump in 2006. Whether the new defamation claim against Trump would be added to the suit against Cohen, or to Daniels' original suit seeking to be released from her “hush” agreement about the alleged affair, was not clear. It is the original lawsuit that Cohen and Trump seek to delay at Friday’s hearing.
Cohen told Judge S. James Otero, in a court filing that prompted Friday’s hearing, that he needs the 90-day delay in the Daniels lawsuit because there is an “ongoing criminal investigation” against him. That investigation, by federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, resulted in a series of April 9 raids on Cohen’s office, home, hotel room and even a safe deposit box rented by Cohen.
In those raids, FBI agents reportedly seized documents relating to Daniels—who says she had a sexual relationship with Trump in 2006—and the $130,000 payoff Cohen sent to her just days before the 2016 presidential election, to buy her silence about the affair allegations.
Otero on Wednesday issued an order calling a hearing on the delay request “warranted” but giving no further explanation. In his initial request for a delay in the Daniels case, Cohen said that because the lawsuit “overlaps” with the criminal investigation he now faces, proceeding with the Daniels suit could “implicate” his Fifth Amendment right against making incriminating statements about himself.
But Trump may have caused further legal problems for himself and for Cohen with his tweet ridiculing the forensic sketch of the man who allegedly threatened Daniels in Trump’s name. Trump has previously claimed to be unaware of Cohen’s dealings with Daniels.
According to an analysis by Washington Post political reporter Aaron Blake, however, by characterizing the man in the sketch as “non-existent,” Trump appears to be admitting that he knew about the Daniels situation and possible attempts to silence her as far back as 2011.
“There is no way for Trump to know this episode in the Las Vegas parking lot didn't happen. Cohen may have assured him that it didn't, but Trump would only be relying upon his word. And Trump's tweet certainly raises the prospect that he was well-apprised of the whole situation back in 2011,” Blake wrote.
Photo via Wikimedia Commons
