Trump Gets Good News About Stormy Daniels Case While in Court
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Facing 34 felony counts in the investigation of hush money payments to onetime adult-film star Stormy Daniels, former President Donald Trump’s camp likely welcomed some positive news after spending Tuesday afternoon in a Manhattan courtroom.
He didn’t have to wait long. At the same time Trump and his legal team prepared their defense, Trump’s attorneys on the other side of the country in California learned Daniels—the star witness in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case—might owe him some money. A lot of it.
Shortly after the allegations of hush money became public, Daniels filed a defamation suit against then-President Donald Trump after he posted a tweet questioning Daniels’ story of being threatened to keep quiet about an alleged affair between them.
Daniels—then working with disgraced attorney Michael Avenatti—claimed an unknown man had threatened her in 2011 in a Las Vegas, Nevada, parking lot to keep quiet about the alleged intimate relationship she’d had with the former president. A hush money payment followed, by former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who testified that he paid it on the ex-president’s behalf.
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After Avenatti released an artist’s sketch depicting the man who Daniels said threatened her, Twitter user posted a side-by-side comparison of Daniels’ ex-husband and the alleged attacker. Trump responded: “A sketch years later about a nonexistent man. A total con job, playing the Fake News Media for Fools (but they know it)!”
Daniels then filed a lawsuit against Trump in California. The judge ultimately found Trump was merely expressing his opinion when he posted the tweet, and ordered Daniels to reimburse him $300,000 in legal fees.
Daniels announced her intention to fight back, tweeting: “I will go to jail before I pay a penny.”
On Tuesday, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled Daniels would be required to compensate Trump roughly $122,000 in additional attorney fees, piling onto the hundreds of thousands she’d already owed him from previous proceedings.
The ruling was celebrated on social media by Harmeet Dhillon, Trump’s attorney in the case and former Republican National Committee chairwoman candidate, who had defended him in a number of cases brought by Daniels.
“Congratulations to President Trump on this final attorney fee victory in his favor this morning,” wrote Dhillon. “Collectively, our firm obtained over $600,000 in attorney fee awards in his favor in the meritless litigation initiated by Stormy Daniels.”
Newsweek has contacted the offices of Daniels’ attorney, Corey Brewster, for comment.
Trump still faces an array of litigation in the coming months. In addition to the hush money case in Manhattan, the Department of Justice is investigating the classified documents from his time as president that were found in his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida, as well as a series of probes into efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Trump also faces a series of investigations into his various corporate enterprises, led by Bragg and New York State Attorney General Letitia James.
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