Trump Lawyer Files Motion To Make Stormy Daniels Pay His Fees

LOS ANGELES—Late last year, Stormy Daniels won a $450,000 settlement from the city of Columbus, Ohio, in a lawsuit over her 2018 arrest while she was performing in a strip club there. But on Monday, a lawyer for Donald Trump filed a motion in a California federal court claiming that nearly $300,000 of that cash belongs to him.  Daniels was arrested in July of 2018 on charges that she broke a local law by making physical contact with strip club patrons — who turned out to be undercover vice officers — during a nude performance. But the charges were dropped within hours and the Columbus police later ruled Daniels’ arrest “improper,” and disciplined the vice cops involved.  Daniels sued, and in September of 2019 settled the case for a cash payout. Within weeks, however, Trump’s lawyers told a court in Ohio that Daniels owed them $293,000, and they wanted it paid out of her wrongful arrest settlement.   Their claim stemmed from a defamation suit against Trump filed by Daniels and her then-lawyer Michael Avenatti, over a Twitter post in which Trump said that Daniels was running a “total con job” with her claim that a man had physically threatened her on behalf of Trump in 2011. But in October of 2018, federal Judge James Otero tossed Daniels’ lawsuit, and ordered her to pay Trump’s attorneys’ fees in the case. And on Monday, attorney Charles Harder filed a motion in the Central District Court of California to get that money — out of Daniels’ Ohio settlement. “To Mr. Trump’s knowledge, Ms. (Daniels) does not possess any assets in this jurisdiction,” Harder wrote in the court document. “In contrast, she possesses substantial assets in the Southern District of Ohio in the form of the $450,000 in settlement funds being held by that court.” Harder goes on to ask the California court to allow him to collect the money from Daniels in Ohio, taking a cut of her settlement payout there.  Complicating the matter, however, is the fact that Daniels is appealing Otero’s dismissal if her defamation lawsuit. In fact, on February 4, Harder squared off in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, against Daniels’ new lawyer, Clark Brewster, in oral arguments before a three-judge panel.  But the Ninth Circuit has not yet issued a ruling on Daniels’ appeal. Harder in his motion filed Monday, however, claims that the award of attorneys fees was not properly appealed by Daniels, and therefore should not be subject to the Ninth Circuit’s eventual decision, according to the legal site Law & Crime.  Photo By WDTN TV YouTube Screen Capture