Trump Hails 'Total Vindication' as Ex-Porn Star Stormy Daniels Loses Appeal in 'Frivolous' Lawsuit

The legal feud between former adult actress Stormy Daniels and the ex-president dates back to her claims that she became intimate with Donald Trump in 2006. The ex-stripper said Trump’s personal lawyer paid her $130,000 in hush money in 2016. The scandal ended up in court, where Michael Cohen admitted the payment, while Trump denied the affair.

The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has rejected former porn star Stormy Daniels’ bid to overturn a lower court decision in her failed defamation lawsuit against Donald Trump.

Friday’s ruling will force Stephanie Clifford (aka Stormy Daniels) to pay Trump nearly $300,000 in attorneys’ fees, costs, and sanctions.

The appeals court stated that it had no jurisdiction over Daniels’ appeal regarding the issue of the attorneys’ fees as the former adult entertainer had failed to file her appeal within a 30-day deadline of a federal judge granting the fees to Donald Trump.

In a statement released soon after the decision of the court, the former president bragged about the final ruling in the “frivolous lawsuit” case.

Trump hailed the ruling as a “total and complete victory and vindication” of him.

He yet again underscored that he had “never had an affair with Stormy Daniels, nor would I ever have wanted to”. According to the 45th POTUS, the entire lawsuit was no more than a “political stunt” that has finally been resolved.

Yearslong Legal Feud

The money that Daniels owes Trump in the case is estimated to be close to the amount she was swindled out of by former lawyer Michael Avenatti.

Avenatti represented Daniels during her high-profile suit against Donald Trump in 2018.

In January 2018, The Wall Street Journal reported that in 2016, before the presidential election, then presidential candidate Donald Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen, had paid $130,000 to Stormy Daniels to stop her from breaking a non-disclosure agreement over an affair she alleged had with Trump in 2006, just after his wife Melania had given birth to their son, Barron. Donald Trump has emphatically denied ever having the affair.

Cohen later publicly acknowledged making the “hush” payment. In 2018, as he pleaded guilty to eight criminal charges, Michael Cohen also admitted a campaign finance violation for Daniels' payment, paying her "in coordination with and at the direction of a candidate for federal office".

Daniels filed three lawsuits at the time. After winning the first, where she argued that her NDA was invalid, she lost the second lawsuit, in which she argued she had been defamed, and was ordered to pay almost $300,000 in legal fees and court sanctions.

In the third lawsuit – settled in May 2019 – she claimed that Cohen had colluded with her previous attorney Keith Davidson against her interests when negotiating the payment.

In 2018, a federal judge dismissed Daniels' defamation lawsuit against Trump, ruling that the ex-president was entitled to receive attorney's fees from the former actress.

At the time, Daniels' attorney Avenatti filed an appeal in the defamation lawsuit against Trump, which the woman lost in August 2020.

On 22 February 2021, the Supreme Court declined to take up the defamation case, but Daniels filed an appeal on the issue of the money she owed Trump with the Ninth Circuit.

Meanwhile, Avenatti was convicted in a Manhattan federal court last month of defrauding Stormy Daniels out of money she was owed in a book deal, where she was expected to narrate her alleged intimate experience with Donald Trump. The woman’s ex-lawyer is due to be sentenced on 2 June.