After a federal judge threw out Stormy Daniels’ defamation lawsuit against Donald Trump earlier this month, Trump vowed to “go after” the AVN Hall of Famer—whom he also insulted by calling her “horseface,” as AVN.com reported. Trump’s effort to go after Daniels began in earnest on Monday, when Trump filed a motion in a Los Angeles federal court, demanding that Daniels pay his lawyer’s fees—to the tune of a whopping $342,000.
According to the motion filed by Trump’s lawyer Charles Harder, Trump's attorneys tried to meet with Daniels’ lawyer Michael Avenatti to discuss a settlement of the fees soon after Judge S. James Otero dismissed the lawsuit. But Avenatti claimed he was too busy, eventually setting up a phone meeting which took place October 26. But on that call, Avenatti refused to come to terms over the fee payment, and vowed to oppose any effort by Trump’s lawyers to collect.
“We now know that Trump believes in legalizing marijuana,” Avenatti quipped to Bloomberg News. “This request is nothing compared to what he will owe my client,” he added referring to Daniels’ other lawsuit against Trump, over a $130,000 “hush money” deal designed to keep Daniels quiet about her 2006 sexual encounter with Trump.
The defamation lawsuit was prompted when Trump took to his Twitter account to deride Daniels’ claim that she was physically threatened by a man invoking Trump’s name as “a total con job.”
The new Trump filing claims that Daniels filed her lawsuit against Trump “not because it had any merit, but instead for the ulterior purposes of raising her media profile, engaging in political attacks against the president by herself and her attorney, who has appeared on more than 150 national television news interviews attacking the President and now is exploring a run for the presidency himself in 2020.”
Avenatti called the $342,000 sum Trump claims Daniels owes him, “a number created out of whole cloth,” according to The New York Post.
Otero dismissed the defamation case, ruling that Trump’s “total con job” statement fell under the category of “rhetorical hyperbole” normally associated with politics and public discourse.” In dismissing the case, he ruled that Daniels must reimburse Trump for his lawyer’s fees, but no amount was specified.
Photo by Gary / Wikimedia Commons
