NEW YORK—Stormy Daniels spoke to a crowd of media outside a federal courthouse in New York City on Monday afternoon, in a short but blistering statement condemning Donald Trump’s lawyer and “fixer” Michael Cohen, who was facing a judge as he tried to stop government lawyers from reading documents seized in a raid on his office April 9—documents that reportedly may shed light on the $130,000 payment he made to Daniels days before the 2016 presidential election.
In her statement following the hearing, at which she sat just feet away from Cohen but appeared “not to interact” with him, according to a WABC-TV News report, Daniels accused Cohen of following “no rules at all” and of not caring about women.
“For years, Mr. Cohen has considered himself above the law. He has considered himself and openly referred to himself as Mr. Trump’s fixer. He has played by a different set of rules, or shall we say, no rules at all,” she said in her 30-second statement, delivered into a bank of media microphones. “He has never thought that the little man, or especially women—or even more, women like me—matter. Now, my attorney and I are committed to making sure that everyone finds out the truth and the facts of what happened. And I give my word that we won’t rest until that happens.”
Daniels says that she had a brief sexual affair with Trump in 2006. Cohen first attempted to force Daniels to keep quiet about the alleged encounter in 2011, according to media reports, and then in 2016 arranged for her silence with the $130,000 payoff. Daniels is now suing to be released from that deal, and is also suing Cohen for defamation because, she says, the Trump fixer called her a liar over the affair allegation.
Federal judge Kimba Wood denied Cohen’s request for a restraining order that would have stopped the government from reading the seized documents until a legal team representing Trump and Cohen had first gone through them, weeding out any they deemed “privileged.”
Wood said that she had faith in the federal prosecutors to handle the documents, saying, “their integrity is unimpeachable.”
The hearing came a day after ABC TV aired an interview with former FBI Director James Comey, who discussed his new book giving inside details of his own interactions with Trump, who fired him in May of 2017. While Comey’s interview drew almost 10 million viewers, according to Nielsen TV ratings, his audience was less than half the 21.3 million drawn by Daniels for her March 25 interview on the CBS program 60 Minutes, in which she revealed details of her alleged affair with Trump.
Photo via MSNBC Screen Capture
