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The saga of the president and the porn star may finally be at an end.
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A federal judge tossed out Stormy Daniels’ lawsuit against President Donald Trump and his former fixer, Michael Cohen, on Thursday, a move that all but confirms she won’t have to pay Trump millions of dollars for breaking a nondisclosure agreement over an affair Daniels says the two had in 2006, when Melania Trump was pregnant with Barron.
Daniels had filed the lawsuit a year ago, in an attempt to free herself of the $130,000 hush agreement paid by Cohen to keep her quiet about the affair before the 2016 election. Under the terms of the agreement, she’d have to pay $1 million every time she spoke out. But Trump and Cohen haven’t moved to sue Daniels and have no plans to do so, even though she’s talked about the alleged affair repeatedly — which pretty much renders the point of the lawsuit moot, as Judge S. James Otero pointed out in his decision Thursday.
“There is no ‘case or controversy’ because [Daniels] has received exactly what she wanted — proof that the agreement is not enforceable,” wrote Otero, a U.S. district court judge in Los Angeles. He found that the district court also lacked jurisdiction over the matter and remanded the case back to the court where it was originally filed, essentially ending the case.
The decision wasn’t a total victory for Team Stormy. Michael Avenatti, Daniels’ attorney, had originally wanted more than just the nondisclosure agreement to get tossed. He also wanted to be repaid for litigation costs and any “further relief” that the court may award, according to a complaint filed last year.
“Clifford’s attorney would claim victory if he got run over by a bus,” Brent Blakely, Cohen’s attorney, told CNN. (He used Daniels’ real name, Stephanie Clifford.) “Clifford has lost every argument in these lawsuits since day one.”
Daniels sued Trump and Cohen in a separate defamation lawsuit last year, after Trump tweeted that her story of being threatened by a man over her alleged affair with Trump was “a total con job.” Otero also dismissed that lawsuit and ordered Daniels to pay for Trump’s $293,000-plus legal fees.
But Daniels took the Thursday decision well. She tweeted, “More than a year ago when I was being threatened with a $20 million lawsuit, I asked a judge to toss out this illegal NDA. Glad I stood my ground & kept fighting.”
Cover image: Adult film actress/director Stormy Daniels attends the 2019 Adult Video News Awards at The Joint inside the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino on January 26, 2019 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Gabe Ginsberg/Getty Images)
