LOS ANGELES—Lawyers for Donald Trump on Monday asked a federal judge to bury Stormy Daniels under nearly $800,000 in fees and penalties, as punishment for bringing what they called a “frivolous” defamation lawsuit against Trump—a lawsuit that Daniels said last week was filed by her lawyer Michael Avenatti even though she did not want him to.
Trump lawyer Charles Harder said that his firm had rung up $390,000 in legal fees defending Trump against the defamation case, which stemmed from a Twitter message he posted in April saying that Daniels’ claim of being physically threatened by man who invoked Trump’s name was “a total con job.” Judge S. James Otero threw out the case in October, saying that Trump’s remarks on Twitter were “protected rhetorical hyperbole” and therefore permitted under the First Amendment.
But in addition to demanding that Daniels pay back the $390,000 Harder claimed to be owed in legal fees—claiming that his firm invested about 500 hours of billable legal work in defending Trump from the defamation suit—the Trump lawyer asked the judge to double that amount, to prevent Daniels from becoming a “repeat filer of frivolous defamation cases,” according to an Associated Press report.
In court, Avenatti called the sum “absurd and outrageous,” telling the judge, “You can’t just pick a number out of thin air in an effort to put my client under Donald Trump’s thumb and intimidate her.”
Later, on his Twitter account, Avenatti said that he expected to be awarded fees from Trump in Daniels’ separate lawsuit over the $130,000 hush money agreement she signed, to silence her over a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006.
“Be clear: Any attys fees that may be awarded in the defamation case (that is going to be reversed on appeal) are but a small fraction of what Trump & Cohen will owe Stormy in the main NDA case,” Avenatti wrote. “We have already forced them to admit they lied to the court and the judge repeatedly.”
Harder said that the unusually high fees were justified due to the nature of the case, which he called, “virtually unprecedented in American legal history,” saying that Daniels “not only brought a meritless claim for defamation against the sitting president of the United States, but she also has engaged, along with her attorney, in massive national publicity,” Politico reported.
Otero did not issue a ruling at Monday’s hearing, though he appeared to agree with Harder that given the high-profile nature of the Trump defamation case, the high fees were largely justified—adding however, that the number of billable hours may ultimately be trimmed. He said nothing about Harder’s request to double the fees as a punishment for Daniels, according to Time.com.
Last week, Daniels issued a statement claiming that Avenatti had filed the Trump defamation lawsuit “against my wishes.” Acccording to Politico, Avenatti has already filed an appeal of Otero's dismissal of the case.
Photo By Thomas Hawk/Flickr Creative Commons
