Stormy Daniels shared on her podcast that she’s “set to testify” in Trump’s March trial on state criminal charges in New York.
“Next-level crazy”
Daniels, real name Stephanie Clifford, told her listeners, “Obviously, things have been next-level crazy since I am set to testify in, at this point in time, March — obviously, that can change any moment — in the hush money case.” The trial date is set for March 25.
Trump’s first indictment
The 2024 Republican presidential candidate was charged “for falsifying New York business records in order to conceal damaging information and unlawful activity from American voters before and after the 2016 election.” The indictment carries “34 counts of Falsifying Business Records in the First Degree.”
Stormy Daniels in the indictment
Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, testified that he paid adult actress Stormy Daniels $130,000 through a shell company that Trump reimbursed. Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to making the hush money payment under Trump’s direction “for the principal purpose” of impacting the 2016 elections.
Affair allegations
Daniels said she met Trump in July 2006 at a golf tournament in Lake Tahoe. She alleged the two had an affair a year after he married Slovenian-born model and former First Lady Melania Trump. Trump denied the affair.
Daniels tried to tell the story in 2011
Initially, the adult actress agreed to tell her story in May’s edition of InTouch Weekly in 2011. But Cohen allegedly threatened to sue the publication. While the story did not come out, the magazine published the full transcript of the 2011 interview with Daniels in 2018.
Daniels tried to speak up in 2016
Stormy Daniels stated she was ready to sell her story in 2016, before the presidential elections. That’s when she allegedly got $130,000 from Cohen to stay quiet. According to court documents, the Trump Organization paid Cohen a series of repayment installments.
Daniels signed an NDA
In 2016, the adult movie star signed the NDA, but two years later, in 2018, she sued Cohen to avoid the NDA and filed defamation lawsuits against Trump and Cohen. Daniels was not the only woman who allegedly got paid to stay silent.
The case involved model Karen McDougal
The former Playmate Karen McDougal was mentioned in the indictment, and she claimed that her alleged affair with the former president lasted for ten months. The two reportedly met at Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles in 2006. Trump denied the affair.
McDougal was ready to tell her story
McDougal claims she was tricked into selling her story exclusively for $150,000. However, the article never came out, and in 2021, the US Federal Election Commission, in charge of enforcing campaign finance law, found that the Enquirer’s publisher “violated election laws by paying for the rights to Ms. McDougal’s story and never publishing it,” BBC reported.
Daniels alleged she was scared
In 2011, Daniels was allegedly approached by an unknown man who told her to “leave Trump alone.” She was in Las Vegas, and her infant daughter was with her at the time. The man allegedly said, “That’s a beautiful little girl. It’d be a shame if something happened to her mom,” Daniels said on CBS’ 60 Minutes.
The indictment made Trump more popular
Following the first indictment, Trump’s numbers went up. Real Clear Politics reported his primary poll numbers rose by about six points on average. While Trump and DeSantis were neck-to-neck in February, things changed dramatically in April. FiveThirtyEight reported almost a 12 percentage-point climb in Trump’s average GOP primary standing since March 2023.
Trump is aware of this
The former president stated, “People are getting it; I can tell you voters are getting it because every time they give me a fake indictment, I go up in the polls, and that has never happened before.” He also shared, “If I weren’t leading in all the polls or if I weren’t running, I wouldn’t have any of these cases.”
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