Sunday evening during a segment of 60 Minutes, Stormy Daniels, the adult film star who came forward with allegations that she had an affair with Donald Trump in 2006, revealed that she was kept from making the affair public through the acceptance of hush money and through a threat of violence.
According to Daniels she accepted $130,000 from Trump attorney Michael Cohen to stay quiet out of fear of the safety of both her career and her family. In the interview Daniels detailed an encounter in a Las Vegas parking lot back in 2011 shortly after she attempted to sell the story of her affair. According to Daniels she was with her infant daughter at the time when a man approached her.
“A guy walked up on me and said to me, ‘Leave Trump alone. Forget the story,’” Daniels told journalist Anderson Cooper. “And then he leaned around and looked at my daughter and said, ‘That’s a beautiful little girl. It’d be a shame if something happened to her mom.’ And then he was gone.”
After the Wall Street Journal broke the news of the payment Daniels received, Daniels signed a statement denying the affair. She since revealed that the statement was false as she felt pressured to sign it on account of a former lawyer and business manager.
“They made it sound like I had no choice,” she said. “The exact sentence used was, ‘They can make your life hell in many different ways.’” Daniels added.
The airing of Daniels’ broadcast arrives on the heels of news of an alleged affair between the president and former Playboy centerfold Karen McDougal. McDougal has sued to get out of a confidentiality agreement in which she was paid $150,000 months before the 2016 election to keep quiet about her relations with Trump. Her story was bought by the National Enquirer, headed up by a friend of the president’s, in an effort to bury the story not to publish it.
Daniels has done the same in suing to break free of her own confidentiality agreement, telling Copper during the interview that her decision to finally speak out came “because it was very important to me to be able to defend myself.”