An adult movie actress on Tuesday sued United States President Donald Trump, asking a court in Los Angeles to declare invalid the “hush agreement” she signed before the 2016 presidential election to keep silent about their decade-old affair. In the lawsuit, Stephanie Clifford – better known by her screen name Stormy Daniels – claims the deal was void because Trump did not sign it, The Washington Post reported.
On October 27, a week before the presidential election, Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen paid Clifford $130,000 (around Rs 84.4 lakh) to keep her relationship with the president in 2006 secret. They made the deal as it came to light that Clifford was planning to give interviews to TV channels about the affair.
In the lawsuit filed in the Los Angeles Superior Court, Clifford requests the court to declare the nondisclosure agreement invalid and unenforceable, claiming that Trump did not sign it deliberately so he could later deny any knowledge of it.
The suit also accuses the lawyer of intimidation and using “coercive tactics” to make her sign a statement in January, denying the affair with Trump. “Despite Mr. Trump’s failure to sign the Hush Agreement, Mr. Cohen proceeded to cause $130,000.00 to be wired to the trust account of Ms. Clifford’s attorney,” the lawsuit says, according to CNN. “He did so even though there was no legal agreement and thus no written nondisclosure agreement whereby Ms. Clifford was restricted from disclosing the truth about Mr. Trump.”
Before the 2016 election, Cohen had approached her with the deal, which the lawsuit calls the “hush agreement”, while several women were going public with their sexual harassment accusations against the president.
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