Stormy Daniels starts crowd funding campaign to pay for lawsuit against Trump

Former porn star Stormy Daniels has launched a crowd funding campaign to pay for a lawsuit against President Donald Trump.

Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, said donations will be used to pay her attorneys’ fees and other costs related the suit filed on March 6. It seeks to void a non-disclosure agreement that prevents her from speaking publicly about her alleged affair with Trump between the summer of 2006 and 2007. Since the agreement was never signed by Trump himself, she argues that it is unenforceable. Trump’s personal lawyer paid Daniels $130,000 in October 2016, weeks prior to the 2016 election, as part of the nondisclosure pact. The lawyer, Michael Cohen, later said that he made the payment with his own money using a personal home equity credit line. The payment was delivered through an LLC set up by Cohen shortly beforehand. Daniels and Trump were referred to by the respective pseudonyms “Peggy Peterson” and “David Dennison.”

The campaign is being hosted by crowdjustice.com, which allows parties involved in legal action to raise money for lawsuits and other legal proceedings. Daniels said her lawsuit is part of an attempt “to speak honestly and openly to the American people about my relationship with now President Donald Trump and the intimidation and tactics used against me.” Daniels, in a statement posted on her crowd funding page, called the arbitration preceding a “bogus” attempt to hide the facts. Trump and Cohen “have threatened me with millions of dollars in damages ($1M each time I speak out) if I tell the truth about what happened,” she added.

A leading TV channel from United States has claimed that it has access to new documents that suggest a deeper link than previously known between the Trump Organization and the company that Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, established in 2016 to pay off porn star Stormy Daniels in exchange for silence about her alleged affair with Trump.

In addition to showing a second attorney connected with the Trump Organization having direct involvement in legal matters related to Daniels, the new documents raise questions about Cohen’s previous insistence that “neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Ms. Clifford,” though it is not known whether Martin had any involvement in the case prior to the arbitration filing.