Porn star Stormy Daniels details alleged Trump affair in transcript
Donald Trump was attending a celebrity golf tournament at a Lake Tahoe resort in July 2006 when he met the adult-film star Stormy Daniels, she later said. Daniels said she took the future president up on his offer to ride around the lakefront course in his golf cart.
"That was actually my first time on a golf course," Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, told Adult Video News, a trade publication, "and when you're riding around with Donald Trump in an Escalade golf cart during your first time out on a course, I'd say I was doing all right."
What happened after has become a matter of intense dispute, stretching across the worlds of politics, media and adult entertainment. Daniels told journalists in interviews conducted over several years - but not made public until this month - that she and Trump had an affair that began at the tournament.
The story received scant attention until the Wall Street Journal reported last week that Trump's longtime personal attorney, Michael Cohen, negotiated a secret $130,000 payment to secure her silence days before the 2016 presidential election.
The salacious allegations echo the tabloid coverage that was a part of Trump's rise as a New York developer. At the same time, they also have refocused attention on the president's history with women.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment Friday. A White House official last week dismissed the story as "old, recycled reports, which were published and strongly denied prior to the election." Cohen released a statement signed by "Stormy Daniels" denying an affair and calling reports of a payment "completely false."
But the controversy shows no signs of abating. On Friday, the celebrity magazine In Touch published a transcript of an interview it said Daniels gave in 2011. Jordi Lippe-McGraw, the reporter In Touch said spoke with Daniels, confirmed to The Washington Post that the transcript accurately reflected the interview she conducted with Daniels by phone in May 2011.
The magazine had published some details from the interview earlier in the week, but the full transcript - totaling more than 5,000 words - gave a new, expansive view of how Daniels recounted their interactions. She said the relationship began with a sexual encounter at the tournament and continued with phone conversations and in-person meetings for about a year, some of them involving Trump's desire to put her on his television show, "The Apprentice," according to the transcript.
Parts of the transcript reveal a familiar portrait of Trump - watching television intently, bragging about one of his daughters and boasting about being on the cover of a magazine. He is also portrayed as a man of quirky fascinations, one who sat riveted by "Shark Week" programming that aired during her visit.
"He is obsessed with sharks," Daniels is quoted as saying. "Terrified of sharks. He was like: 'I donate to all these charities and I would never donate to any charity that helps sharks. I hope all the sharks die.' "
According to the transcript, Daniels said that in his hotel room, she asked Trump about his wife, Melania, who had recently given birth to their son, Barron. "He goes, 'Oh, don't worry about her' [and] quickly, quickly changed the subject," Daniels is quoted as saying.
Daniels told Lippe-McGraw she was going public about the alleged affair years after it ended because she was disturbed by comments Trump had made criticizing people in the pornography business, the transcript says. "It was very derogatory, and that makes me more mad than anything," she is quoted as saying.
Daniels could not be reached for comment this week, and a lawyer said to be representing her did not respond to messages seeking comment. A receptionist at his office said he was not there when a reporter visited Thursday.
Daniels was not the only porn star with a story involving Trump and the 2006 golf tournament. Jessica Drake worked the event with Daniels, promoting the work of Wicked Pictures, an adult-film company. Days before the 2016 election, Drake said publicly that Trump kissed her without permission and that later she was offered $10,000 to go alone to Trump's hotel room, charges his campaign denied.
Drake did not respond this week to requests for comment.
Her publicist, Josh Ortiz, told the Daily Beast last week that Drake had signed a nondisclosure agreement "covering any and every mention of Trump," the outlet reported. Immediately after the story published, however, Ortiz said that no such agreement existed and that he had "made an incorrect assumption due to a grave misunderstanding."
Drake's attorney, Gloria Allred, said in an email this week that Drake "did not sign an NDA with Trump and has no settlement with him." Allred also represents some of the other women who came forward before the 2016 election to accuse Trump of sexual misconduct, one of whom is suing him for defamation.
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