White House: Trump thinks Stormy Daniels lied about threat

In a letter late Sunday night, an attorney for Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, demanded that Daniels publicly apologize to his client for suggesting he was involved in her intimidation.

“In truth, Mr. Cohen had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with any such person or incident, and does not even believe that any such person exists, or that such incident ever occurred,” wrote Brent H. Blakely. He said Daniels and her lawyer, Michael Avenatti, should “cease and desist from making any further false and defamatory statements about my client.”

Daniels, in response, filed a revised federal lawsuit accusing Cohen of defamation. The suit now alleges Cohen made a false statement that damaged Daniels’ reputation when he released a statement in February that intimated she was lying.

Daniels told “60 Minutes” she had consensual sex once with the future president, providing a few salacious details but little new evidence of the encounter.

Still, she said that she’d been rattled by the parking lot incident in which she a man had told her to “leave Trump alone” and “forget the story.” She said the man looked over at her daughter, and said: “That’s a beautiful little girl. It’d be a shame if something happened to her mom.”

In a round of television interviews Monday morning, Avenatti said he was holding back certain details of the alleged affair, including the contents of a CD or DVD he tweeted a picture of last week, for strategic reasons. “It would make no sense for us to play our hand as to this issue and we’re not going to do it right now,” he said on NBC’s “Today” show.

Daniels received a $130,000 payment days before the 2016 presidential election for her silence and has sought to invalidate a nondisclosure agreement she signed. Cohen has said he paid the $130,000 out of his pocket while asserting Trump never had sex with the porn actress.

“He knows I’m telling the truth,” Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, said of Trump. She said she was not coerced to have sex and “I was not a victim.”

Previously, Cohen has said neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Daniels and he was not reimbursed for the payment.

During Monday’s briefing, Shah said neither the White House nor Trump had violated campaign finance laws that restrict political contributions.

“The White House didn’t engage in any wrongdoing,” Shah said of Trump’s behaviour, adding that there was “nothing to corroborate” Daniels’ intimidation claims.

Avenatti insisted the threat “had to have come from someone associated with Mr. Trump,” but acknowledged he had no direct evidence implicating Trump or his lawyer.

Trump has been uncharacteristically silent on the allegations. He complained in a tweet Monday about “So much Fake News,” but has not confronted the allegations head-on. A spokeswoman for the first lady said she is “focused on being a mom and is quite enjoying spring break at Mar-a-Lago while working on future projects.”

But Daniels was on Trump’s mind this weekend in Palm Beach, Florida, where he had dinner Saturday night with Cohen at his Mar-a-Lago estate.

Trump, according to one person who spent time with him, told guests that Daniels now owes him $21 million for breaking her silence, and that every time she talks, she owes him a million more. Still, Trump appeared in good spirits, laughing off the fact that Daniels will be bringing her “Making America Horny Again” strip show to a nearby venue next month, said the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to disclose private conversations.

Mar-a-Lago member Chris Ruddy, the CEO of Newsmax, told ABC Sunday that Trump told him “much of the Stormy Daniels stuff” is a “political hoax.”

In the interview, Daniels described a sexual encounter with Trump that began with him talking about himself and showing her an issue of a magazine with his picture on the cover.

She said she ordered him to drop his pants and, in a playful manner, “I just gave him a couple swats.” At one point she said he told her: “Wow, you — you are special. You remind me of my daughter.”

The interview gave the show its biggest audience in a decade, with slightly more than 22 million viewers tuning in, according to Nielsen company estimates.

Daniels is not the only woman accusing Trump. Former Playboy model Karen McDougal told Cooper in a CNN interview broadcast Thursday that her affair with Trump began at a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel in 2006.

McDougal has filed suit in Los Angeles seeking to invalidate a confidentiality agreement with American Media Inc., the company that owns the supermarket tabloid National Enquirer. It paid her $150,000 during the 2016 presidential election for the rights to her story. It never ran.

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Associated Press writers Ken Thomas, Kevin Freking and Zeke Miller contributed to this report.

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Follow Colvin on Twitter at https://twitter.com/colvinj

Jill Colvin, The Associated Press

by Canadian Press

White House: Trump thinks Stormy Daniels lied about threat

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