The former porn star at the heart of Donald Trump’s historic indictment in New York has been ordered to pay him more than $121,000 (£96,965) towards legal fees in an unrelated case.
Stormy Daniels, alleged to have had an affair with Trump in 2006, lost her defamation case over a 2018 tweet written by the former US president. An appeals court judge in California dismissed Daniels’ case, and awarded Trump a payment for legal fees. Trump has denied the affair.
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 -alledged to have been ‘hush money’ to keep quiet but not properly recorded.
Stormy 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.