Stormy Daniels sues Trump over alleged affair and 'hush' agreement
Washington (CNN)A new lawsuit filed by the porn star known as Stormy Daniels claims President Donald Trump never signed a hush agreement regarding an alleged sexual encounter between the two and therefore the agreement is void.According to the legal complaint filed in California state court and tweeted out by her lawyer on Tuesday, Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, signed the document on behalf of the President instead.The porn star, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, claims in the lawsuit to have had an affair with Trump several years prior to his presidency. However, the lawsuit claims that when he was running for office and multiple women were coming forward to share stories of their own alleged encounters with the then-Republican presidential candidate, Cohen intervened in an attempt to keep Clifford from coming forward as well."Despite Mr. Trump's failure to sign the Hush Agreement, Mr. Cohen proceeded to cause $130,000.00 to be wired to the trust account of Ms. Clifford's attorney. He did so even though there was no legal agreement and thus no written nondisclosure agreement whereby Ms. Clifford was restricted from disclosing the truth about Mr. Trump," the document states.The lawsuit says Cohen has continued his attempts at silencing Clifford -- including as recently as February 27, 2018."To be clear, the attempts to intimidate Ms. Clifford into silence and 'shut her up' in order to 'protect Mr. Trump' continue unabated," the lawsuit states. "For example, only days ago on or about February 27, 2018, Mr. Trump's attorney Mr. Cohen surreptitiously initiated a bogus arbitration proceeding against Ms. Clifford in Los Angeles. Remarkably, he did so without even providing Ms. Clifford with notice of the proceeding and basic due process."A defense lawyer representing Cohen did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday.NBC News first reported on Clifford's complaint against Trump.Just weeks before the 2016 election, Cohen reportedly created a private LLC to pay off Clifford, The Wall Street Journal reported in January.Last month, Cohen admitted to making a payment to Clifford, writing in a statement: "Neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Ms. Clifford, and neither reimbursed me for the payment, either directly or indirectly."The lawsuit says Cohen's February statement was issued "without any consent by Ms. Clifford, thus evidencing Mr. Cohen's apparent position (at least in that context) that no binding agreement was in place."Following initial reports that Cohen had made the payment, he said in a statement that Trump "vehemently denies" any encounter between the two.CNN's Patricia DiCarlo and Sara Sidner contributed to this report.
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