LOS ANGELES—The legal case pitting Donald Trump against Stormy Daniels appears to be headed for another momentous week, a week set to culminate in Daniels’ potentially explosive interview airing on CBS News' 60 Minutes—but which started with the revelation that attempts by Trump’s lawyer to silence Daniels over her alleged decade-old affair with Trump began as far back as seven years ago.
Daniels’ lawsuit against Trump was moved to federal court last week as well, after Trump and his “fix-it guy” Michael Cohen filed a motion to remove the case from Los Angeles County Superior Court.
The motion, which also claims that Daniels owes Trump a whopping $20 million for supposedly violating their non-disclosure agreement about the alleged affair, is particularly significant in that it marks the first time that Trump himself has attached his name to the case.
Trump has made no public comments about the Daniels lawsuit or affair, though White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders has called reports of the affair “false.” By attaching his name to the case, Trump appears to acknowledge that the affair actually took place.
Reports surfaced in January that Trump, or at least Cohen, paid $130,000 in “hush money” to shut Daniels up just a few weeks before the 2016 presidential election. But on Sunday, The Washington Post reported that Cohen first attempted to silence Daniels in 2011, even making a vague verbal threat to Daniels’ then-manager.
At the time, Daniels had a deal to give an interview about the alleged affair to Bauer Publications, owner of the celebrity magazine InTouch Weekly and other similar magazines, the Post reported.
But Cohen placed a call seeking to speak to Gina Rodriguez, who then represented Daniels. According to the Post report, Rodriguez's then-husband Randy Spears took the call, and reported that Cohen conveyed a threat to Rodriguez.
“You tell Gina that if she ever wants to work in this town again, she’ll call me immediately,” Cohen told Spears, according to the Post report.
Daniels backed out of her deal with Bauer Publications, though whether her change of heart occurred before or after Cohen’s reported threat is unclear. Earlier this year, InTouch Weekly published a 2011 interview with Daniels in which she gave details of sexual encounters with Trump.
On Friday, Daniels current lawyer Michael Avenatti alleged that Daniels had been on the receiving end of credible threats to her physical safety, and that the threats had been recent. Avenatti also said that he himself had also received credible threats.
Avenatti appeared unfazed by the removal of Daniels case from Los Angeles to a federal court. On Sunday, he posted a message to his Twitter account noting that last year, he won a $454 million damages judgment in federal court in a case involving faulty surgical gowns.
Daniels’ interview on 60 Minutes is scheduled for broadcast on Sunday, March 25.
