A separate lawsuit has ordered the former porn star at the centre of Donald Trump’s historic indictment in New York to pay him more than $121,000 for legal expenses.
Stormy Daniels, who was accused of having an affair with Trump in 2006, lost her defamation case due to a tweet the former US president posted in 2018.
A California appeals court judge dismissed Daniels’ claim and granted Trump compensation for his legal expenses. Trump has refuted the relationship. The civil defamation lawsuit brought by Daniels was entirely separate from the 34 charges filed against Trump in Manhattan on Tuesday.
While both cases involve Daniels, the New York indictment relates to a payment made to her during the 2016 presidential election – alleged to have been “hush money” to keep quiet but not properly recorded.
Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, sued Trump after he called an allegation by Daniels a “total con job” in a tweet on 18 April 2018.
In the tweet, Trump dismissed an allegation by Daniels that an unknown man had threatened her in a parking lot to keep quiet about her alleged affair with Trump.
The case was dismissed after 9th Circuit Court of Appeals judge Samuel James Otero said Trump’s statement was protected by the First Amendment. Daniels, 44, was then ordered to pay Trump’s legal fees in the amount of $293,000, CNN reported.
She appealed, arguing the legal fees were too high, but lost. The court found that her “argument that the fee request is unreasonable and excessive is not well-founded,” BBC’s US media partner CBS reported.
Daniels was ordered to pay another $245,000 in fees after losing that appeal. And on Tuesday – as Trump was fingerprinted, escorted by police into a Manhattan courtroom and listened to a judge read him charges of 34 felony counts – Daniels was ordered to pay Trump the $121,972.
Trump’s lawyer Harmeet Dhillon celebrated the judgement in California, writing on Twitter:
“Congratulations to President Trump on this final attorney fee victory in his favour this morning. Collectively, our firm obtained over $600,000 in attorney fee awards in his favour in the meritless litigation initiated by Stormy Daniels.” bbcnews