Above, Stormy Daniels at the January 2017 AVN Adult Entertainment Expo, signing for Wicked. Photo by Hew Burney
UPDATE: According to a TMZ report late Tuesday afternoon, the Stormy Daniels Instagram account appeared back online as inexplicably as it disappeared on Monday. But it wasn’t all good news for Daniels. TMZ reported that the Las Vegas Chateau Nightclub that had booked Daniels for a live show, scheduled for January 26, pulled the plug on her appearance, which would have coincided with the third day of the 2018 AVN Adult Entertainment Expo. According to the site, the club sought to avoid the crush of media that descended last Saturday on a nightclub in South Carolina, where Daniels made her first public appearance since the scandal over her alleged hush money payment from Donald Trump’s lawyer broke in the Wall Street Journal.
CYBERSPACE—As Stormy Daniels, who is now being called “the world’s most important porn star” by no less than The New York Times, prepared for her anticipated arrival at the 2018 AVN Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas this week, she was greeted with some mysterious bad news on Monday morning. According to the celebrity news site TMZ, the social media platform Instagram shut down her account—with no explanation.
Daniels’ Instagram account, according to what her reps told the site, contained no NSFW material, but instead consisted primarily of “inspirational quotes” and promotional photographs of the AVN Hall of Famer fully clad.
But Daniels has also been using Instagram to help get the word out about her current live appearance strip-club tour, which she has promoted as the “Make America Horny Again” tour. That promotional opportunity is now off limits to Daniels—unless Instagram allows her account back online.
Daniels’ booking agency, Centerfold Features, told TMZ that they expect her live appearance schedule to be fully booked through all of 2018 in just one week. And that’s all thanks to her alleged affair with Donald Trump that reportedly took place back in 20026 and 2007—an affair that, according to a bombshell Wall Street Journal report on January 12, Daniels can no longer discuss because she accepted a $130,000 payoff from Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen.
Trump himself has not made any public comments about the alleged affair with Daniels, but Cohen—a former personal injury lawyer who once operated a fleet of New York City and Chicago taxis and who has represented Trump for more than a decade—said earlier in January that his client “vehemently denies” that the affair with Daniels took place.
Reportedly, the final post to Daniels’ now-missing Instagram page was an image plugging her appearance last Saturday at a strip club in South Carolina. Instagram as of Tuesday morning had offered no explanation for why the account was taken offline.
“We don’t know why it was deleted. We’re not sure if Instagram deleted it or if it was hacked and deleted,” Daniels’ rep, Gina Rodriguez, told The New York Daily News. “There wasn't anything profound on it.”
When Daniels herself was asked by reporters at her live appearance on Saturday to discuss the Trump allegations, she remained silent, responding only “with a wordless grin and a shaking head,” according to The New York Times.
Daniels’ schedule for the 2018 AVN Adult Entertainment Expo has not yet been announced, but she is nominated for four AVN Awards, including Director of the Year. Daniels also received noms for Best Director for Wicked Pictures’ Unbridled and Best Screenplay for Wicked’s Vendetta. Her role in Vendetta is also up for a Best All-Girl Group Sex Scene award, along with Asa Akira and Kleio Valentien.
