Adult film star Stormy Daniels has lost her appeal in her failed defamation suit against Donald Trump — leaving her owing almost $300,000 in legal fees to the former president.
“I will go to jail before I pay a penny,” Daniels tweeted Monday after the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against her in the long-running case.
Trump hailed the ruling by the appeals court he often bashed as president, calling it “a total and complete victory and vindication for, and of me.”
Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, and her then-lawyer Michael Avenatti filed the defamation suit against Trump back in 2018.
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Daniels was paid $130,000 by former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen before the 2016 presidential election to remain silent about an alleged sexual encounter she had with the married Trump in 2006.
Trump has denied the encounter happened, and did again in his statement Monday. “As I have stated many times throughout the years, I never had an affair with Stormy Daniels, nor would I ever have wanted to,” he said.
After news of the hush money payment became public, Daniels said she was menaced and warned to keep quiet about the alleged encounter in 2011, when a man approached her while she was with her infant daughter in Las Vegas and told her to “leave Trump alone.”
She said the man then looked at her daughter and said, “That’s a beautiful little girl. It’d be a shame if something happened to her mom.”
She and Avenatti released a sketch of the man in 2018, which was mocked on Twitter by then-President Trump.
“A sketch years later about a nonexistent man. A total con job, playing the Fake News Media for Fools (but they know it)!” Trump tweeted.
Daniels’ lawsuit called the tweet “false and defamatory.”
“Mr. Trump knew that his false, disparaging statement would be read by people around the world, as well as widely reported, and that Ms. Clifford would be subjected to threats of violence, economic harm, and reputational damage as a result,” Daniels’ lawsuit said.
A federal judge in California, however, sided with Trump, and found that the tweet “constitutes ‘rhetorical hyperbole’ normally associated with politics and public discourse in the United States.”
“The First Amendment protects this type of rhetorical statement,” Judge James Otero wrote, finding that Trump was entitled to attorney’s fees in the case.
The 9th Circuit upheld that ruling on Friday, finding in part that Daniels had waited too long to challenge the lower court’s ruling.
Daniels’ current attorneys did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Her former lawyer Avenatti was found guilty of wire fraud and identity theft for wrongly pocketing about $300,000 of the $800,000 advance that was paid to Daniels for her book, “Full Disclosure.”
He was also convicted in 2020 of extortion, transmission of interstate communications with intent to extort and wire fraud in connection to threats he made against Nike, the sports equipment and apparel giant.
Last year, a federal judge sentenced him to 2½ years behind bars for those crimes. He is set to report to prison for that conviction later this year.
Courtney Brogle contributed.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
