“Everything is off now, and Stormy is going to tell her story.”
Stormy Daniels, the porn star alleged to have had an affair with Donald Trump, said Wednesday through her manager she is now free to tell her story after a lawyer representing Trump acknowledged he paid her to keep quiet, according to the Associated Press.
Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, responded through her manager to reports that Trump attorney Michael Cohen paid her $130,000 out of his own pocket to prevent the actress from talking about the alleged 2006 sexual encounter before Trump was elected to public office.
Gina Rodriguez, Daniels’ manager, said that Cohen had invalidated a nondisclosure agreement by acknowledging the payment, freeing Daniels to share her account of her relationship with Trump.
“Everything is off now, and Stormy is going to tell her story,” Rodriguez said.
Daniels first detailed an alleged extramarital affair with Trump in 2011 to celebrity website The Dirty, but the story was deleted from the site under the threat of a lawsuit, says the site’s founder Nik Richie.
The story then resurfaced a month before Election Day during the 2016 presidential campaign, but it went mostly unnoticed. The Wall Street Journal reported in January that Cohen made the payment to keep Daniels from talking about the affair while Trump’s presidential campaign was ongoing.
On Tuesday, Cohen said the money came from his own pocket, and Trump had nothing to do with the payment.
“Neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Ms. Clifford, and neither reimbursed me for the payment, either directly or indirectly,” Cohen said.
Keith Davidson, a lawyer for Daniels, previously released a statement on her behalf stating the affair did not happen. But in a 2011 interview with In Touch Weekly that was not published at the time, the actress described a years-long sexual relationship with Trump.
Rodriguez said Daniels will soon announce how and when she will tell her story to the world.
