Stormy Daniels

The porn star’s account of Trump’s hush money payment of $130,000 in the leadup to the 2016 presidential election after their alleged tryst ten years earlier in a Lake Tahoe hotel room, a year after he married his wife, Melania, is central to the case.

She’s expected to be a key witness at the trial.

Daniels, 45, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, was thrust into the political spotlight in 2018 when news of the payments went public.

The Louisiana native sued Trump for defamation in the same year, based on a tweet Trump wrote suggesting Daniels had lied about being threatened not to go public about the affair with the president. The two have tangled in civil court a number of times.

The attorney who repped Daniels in litigation with Trump, Michael Avenatti, also featured as a bit player in the hush money saga. Starting as a liberal resistance hero and Trump-world villain — even flirting with a presidential run — Avenatti was later convicted of stealing from the client who made him famous and other crimes. He is currently serving a 14-year sentence.

When she testified at Avenatti’s January 2022 trial for stealing advance proceeds from her memoir “Full Disclosure,” Daniels pushed back on descriptions of her rendezvous with Trump at the charity golf tournament as an “affair.”

“Because it was not romantic,” she said. “I don’t consider getting cornered coming out of a bathroom to be an affair.”

The adult film star and author’s book made quite the splash, in which she likened the then-president’s penis to a “toadstool” with “Yeti pubes” and the “mushroom character in Mario Kart.”

Karen McDougal

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