Photo: White House/Alan via Wikimedia Commons (CC license 3.0)
Former President and current Republican nominee Donald Trump reportedly tried to get adult film performer Stormy Daniels to sign a hush money agreement — again, after he was already found guilty of charges connected to the first time he bought her silence.
This week, out MSNBC host Rachel Maddow broke the story on All In with Chris Hayes. According to Maddow, Daniels’ lawyer provided her and her team with documents showing that, with the November election looming, Trump’s lawyers offered to reduce the amount Daniels owed the former president in legal fees after she lost a defamation suit against him in 2020. In exchange, Trump’s lawyers wanted Daniels to agree not to talk about the former president.
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Daniels, of course, was at the center of the criminal trial in which Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to payments Daniels received ahead of the 2016 election to cover up his alleged extramarital affair with the adult film actress.
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In a separate case, Daniels sued the former president for defamation. The case was dismissed, and Daniels was ordered to pay upwards of $600,000 to cover Trump’s legal fees.
According to Maddow, Daniels was able to raise enough to cover what she owed Trump through a GoFundMe account. But during what Maddow described as standard negotiations over the precise amount she would pay, Daniels got a call she wasn’t expecting.
On Hayes’ show, Maddow threw to cellphone video, apparently taken by Daniels, of that call, in which a voice identified as Daniels’ lawyer, Clark Brewster, tells Daniels that “they want to cut some kind of deal where they silence you.”
“In the midst of this negotiation over paying off the last legal settlement between them, Trump is trying to get another hush money deal with Stormy Daniels ahead of this election,” Maddow explained.
“Trump’s lawyer basically offered to take it off the bottom line. They would pretend that Stormy Daniels owed less money to Trump than they actually believed she owed if she also signed an agreement to not talk about Trump,” she continued. “This time, they were apparently planning to launder the new hush money payment to Stormy Daniels through the payment of a legal judgment.”
In addition to the footage of the call, Daniels’ lawyer also provided Maddow and MSNBC with a July 25, 2024, email from Trump’s lawyer, Harry J. Ross, in which Ross writes that while Trump’s lawyers “disagree” that a payment of $620,000 “would be in full satisfaction of the three judgements,” they would “agree to settle these matters for $620,000.00, provided that your client agrees in writing to make no public or private statements related to any alleged past interactions with President Trump… or his suitability as a candidate for President.”
As Maddow noted, Trump’s lawyers were essentially agreeing to take $30,000 less than they believed she owed if she agreed to sign another nondisclosure agreement similar to the one that led to Trump’s criminal conviction.
Both Daniels and her lawyers emphatically rejected the offer. According to Maddow, Daniels’ lawyer says they finally settled on a $627,500 payment, which she paid without signing another NDA.
Maddow said that Trump’s lawyer did not respond to questions about the matter but instead forwarded her questions to the Trump campaign.
In a statement, Trump campaign communications director Steven Cheung wrote, “These purported documents were attained as part of an illegal, foreign hacking attack against President Trump and his team.”
Maddow reiterated that MSNBC received the documents directly from Daniels’ lawyer. “There was no hacking involved. We did not get them from any hack or the leaking of any hacked documents,” she said.
“The bottom line here is, the Republican nominee for president, Donald Trump, is currently awaiting sentencing for crimes involving a secret hush money payment he made to [adult film] star Stormy Daniels just before the 2016 election to keep her from talking about him, and specifically about having sex with him,” Maddow said. “And now, just before the 2024 election, Trump has once again demanded that Stormy Daniels sign on to an agreement not to talk about him, offering to knock thousands of dollars off her bill if she did it.”
Maddow said that MSNBC contacted the New York district attorney’s office, which prosecuted Trump in the initial hush-money case, and they declined to comment.
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