Washington: Mar 8, 2018
Their first meeting was in Lake Tahoe, at a golf tournament in the summer of 2006. He invited her to dinner, she says. But when she got to his hotel room, it was clear he didn’t plan to go out.
“He was wearing pyjama pants,” Stormy Daniels told InTouch magazine in 2011, describing what she alleged was a consensual sexual encounter with Donald Trump five years before. Trump has denied it happened.
Stormy Daniels has alleged an affair with Donald Trump.
Stormy Daniels has alleged an affair with Donald Trump.
In Daniels’ description, this was an unremarkable meeting between two people in the outer orbits of Hollywood fame. Daniels was a star of adult movies. Trump’s reality show, The Apprentice, was slumping. At this Lake Tahoe celebrity tournament, the organisers had given him only fifth billing, listing the real estate developer two spots below Ray Romano in their lineup of stars.
That casual night – and the connection it allegedly created between a future president and a porn star – has altered the course of Daniels’ life and threatens to alter the course of the Trump presidency.
Days before the 2016 election, Daniels agreed to remain silent about the alleged encounter in exchange for a $130,000 payment arranged by Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen, according to a court filing.
But in recent weeks, her story started leaking out. Last week, Cohen obtained a temporary restraining order from an arbitration judge barring Daniels from talking about the deal, according to people familiar with the matter.
In response, Daniels sued the President, alleging Trump and Cohen had tried to force her into silence with an invalid “hush agreement”.
The porn star alleges US President Donald Trump did not sign a non-disclosure agreement for a payment to keep a decade-old affair between them quiet.
On Wednesday, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders reiterated Trump’s denial of an affair. “The President has addressed these [allegations] directly and made very well clear that none of these allegations are true,” she said.
Back on the night that allegedly started it all, Daniels has claimed Trump didn’t say anything about keeping the encounter a secret. “He didn’t seem worried about it,” she told InTouch. “It did occur to me, ‘That’s a really stupid move on your part.’ ”
At the time in Lake Tahoe, Trump had been married to his third wife, Melania, for a year-and-a-half. Their son, Barron, was about four-months old.
Trump turned 60 that summer. He spent much of it in California, where one of his favoured haunts was the Beverly Hills Hotel and the private bungalows on its lush grounds.
Some people come to Hollywood to start their TV careers: Trump had come to reboot his. The Apprentice had made him world famous, but after five seasons, its audience had declined. The show had shifted its location from New York’s Trump Tower to Beverly Hills as part of a reboot.
Later, several women alleged Trump made advances on them during this period – some unwanted.
Karen McDougal, a Playboy model, told The New Yorker she began an alleged affair with Trump when he was in Los Angeles, recalling his repeated meals of steak and potatoes in his Beverly Hills Hotel bungalow. Another, Summer Zervos, has alleged in a lawsuit that Trump kissed and groped her in a 2007 encounter in a bungalow at the same hotel.
In July of 2006, Trump travelled to Lake Tahoe for the American Century Championship, a golf tournament dominated by former athletes and TV stars. “Grab the shades with heavy UV because the star power is blinding: Lance Armstrong, Michael Jordan, Ray Romano, Charles Barkley, Donald Trump,” the organisers announced.
