Stormy Daniels/Trump Affair: New Details Emerge

CHATSWORTH, Calif.—Last week, veteran performer and Wicked Pictures contract star Stormy Daniels suddenly put the porn industry into headlines nationwide, when The Wall Street Journal reported that in 2006 she had a sexual affair with Donald Trump—and 10 years later accepted a hefty payoff to buy her silence about the liaison. The payoff totaling $130,000 was paid by Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen, into a bank account maintained by Daniels’ attorney who had negotiated a “non-disclosure agreement” for Daniels regarding any contact between her and Trump, according to the Journal report. Cohen denied the story, and he circulated a letter purportedly from Daniels in which she also appeared to deny any sexual relationship with Trump, as well as the “hush money” payoff. But according to an article by Slate online magazine editor Jacob Weisberg that appeared on the site Tuesday, Daniels was singing an entirely different tune in October of 2016, just one month before the fateful 2016 presidential election.  Weisberg writes that he received a “tip” in early August of 2016, shortly after that year’s Republican National Convention at which Trump accepted the party’s nomination for president. His tipster told him about Daniels and her claimed relationship with Trump. Weisberg then tracked Daniels down and in a series of phone calls and text messages, she told him the whole story of what transpired between her and the then-Apprentice star who later ran for president. In fact, Daniels told the Slate editor that her sexual relationship with Trump involved far more than the single fling at a 2006 celebrity golf tournament mentioned by the Journal—about 18 months after Trump married his third and current wife, Melania, and four months after the birth of their son, Barron.  The porn star and the future commander-in-chief carried on an affair that lasted almost a full year, she told Weisberg. Amazingly, Daniels told Weisberg that her lawyer had negotiated a six-figure sum with Trump’s lawyer, Cohen, to purchase her silence about the affair. Daniels even provided Weisberg with a digital image of two pages from said agreement, which was then unsigned. That image of the pages may be viewed by clicking on this link. Because she was planning to sign the deal, Daniels told Weisberg that she could not share certain salacious details, such as her ability to “describe things about Trump that only someone who had seen him naked would know.” Daniels also hinted to Weisberg that Trump’s sexual skills were not up to the standard that he would like the public to believe. Trump’s second wife, Marla Maples, was once quoted by The New York Post as saying that sex with Trump was the “best I’ve ever had.” But Daniels did not, apparently, share that evaluation. Why was Daniels so open with Weisberg about her agreement when she might have risked receiving the hush money payout?  “Daniels said she was talking to me and sharing these details because Trump was stalling on finalizing the confidentiality agreement and paying her,” Wesiberg wrote. “Given her experience with Trump, she suspected he would stall her until after the election, and then refuse to sign or pay up.” If Trump failed to pay, Daniels planned to make money by selling her story to the highest bidder, rather than by agreeing to keep it quiet, she told Weisberg.