New York, Apr 30 (EFE).- Porn actress Stormy Daniels on Monday sued President Donald Trump for defamation of character, broadening the legal battle she has been waging with him as a result of their alleged affair in 2006.
The new lawsuit, filed on Monday in a New York federal court, focuses on a Twitter message Trump posted earlier this month that Daniels – real name Stephanie Clifford – claims is “false and defamatory.”
In the tweet, Trump said that the composite sketch of the man Daniels claimed threatened her in 2011 to keep quiet about her alleged affair with the mogul was a “total con job.”
“A sketch years later about a nonexistent man. A total con job, playing the Fake News Media for Fools (but they know it)!” Trump tweeted on April 18.
In her lawsuit, Daniels – through her attorney, Michael Avenatti – claims that the president lied to attack the veracity of her testimony and used the enormous audience he has on Twitter to “denigrate” her.
Daniels said that the man approached her several weeks after she had agreed to discuss her alleged relationship with Trump for In Touch magazine.
She told CBS’s “60 Minutes” that the man came up to her and her infant daughter in a Las Vegas parking lot and told her, “Leave Trump alone. Forget the story,” adding “That’s a beautiful little girl. It’d be a shame if something happened to her mom.”
She said that what appeared to be a direct threat scared her so much that, during the final leg of the 2016 presidential campaign, she agreed to sign a confidentiality agreement about her romance with Trump in exchange for $130,000.
Daniels is pursuing another suit in a Los Angeles court to free her from the constraints imposed on her by the confidentiality agreement.
Last Friday, the judge hearing that case decided to postpone it for 90 days after Trump attorney Michael Cohen – who allegedly paid Daniels the $130,000 out of his own funds and without the magnate’s knowledge – took the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination.
Cohen is being investigated after the FBI raided his office on April 9 and seized documents linked to various matters, including the supposed payment he made to Daniels.
Some legal experts say that the payment to Daniels violated campaign finance laws since it was made to protect the public image of a candidate.