United States President Donald Trump in February obtained a restraining order against adult movie actress Stephanie Clifford – better known by her screen name Stormy Daniels – to prevent her from publicly speaking about their alleged affair, the BBC reported on Thursday.
His lawyer Michael Cohen got the order days before Clifford sued Trump on Tuesday, asking a Los Angeles court to declare invalid the non-disclosure contract she had signed before the 2016 presidential election to keep silent about their alleged decade-old affair.
“This case has already been won in arbitration and anything beyond that, I would refer you to the president’s outside counsel,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters.
Cohen had emailed the order to Clifford’s lawyer on February 28, NBC News reported. “The document itself is to remain confidential and not to be disclosed to anyone as per the terms of the judge’s order,” the email read.
In her lawsuit, Clifford claimed that Trump and his lawyer had made an effort to silence her for more than a year. She claimed that their affair had begun in the summer of 2006 – a few months after the president’s wife Melania Trump gave birth to their son Barron – and lasted for more than a year.
On October 27, 2016, a week before the presidential election, Cohen had paid Clifford $130,000 (around Rs 84.4 lakh) to keep her alleged relationship with the president a secret. They made the deal after it came to light that Clifford had been planning to give interviews to TV channels about the “affair”.
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