Stormy’s lawyer: ‘Sizable’ reward to ID man who made threat

By Kristine Phillips / The Washington Post

The lawyer representing Stormy Daniels, an adult-film actress who said she had a sexual relationship with President Donald Trump in 2006, said he will announce a “sizable” reward for the identification of a person he said threatened his client to keep quiet about the alleged affair.

Along with that announcement, which attorney Michael Avenatti said will happen Tuesday, will be the release of a composite sketch of a man who allegedly threatened Daniels in a Las Vegas parking lot seven years ago. In an interview on CNN’s “New Day” Monday morning, Avenatti declined to say how much the reward money would be or whether he’s working with police to identify the man.

“We are very close to identifying this individual… . We need some assistance from the public,” Avenatti told CNN’s Alisyn Camerota, adding later, “I’m also confident that when we release the sketch tomorrow and when we offer the sizable reward, someone is going to come forward and it’s going to tighten the noose, if you will, on this issue.”

Avenatti, an aggressive and outspoken lawyer, first hinted at the announcement Sunday, when he tweeted a picture of Daniels sitting down with Lois Gibson, a forensic artist who holds the Guinness World Record for the highest number of suspect identifications in 2017.

Two weeks earlier, Daniels told Anderson Cooper in a “60 Minutes” interview that a man approached her in 2011 as she was on her way to a fitness class and told her: “Leave Trump alone. Forget the story.” At that time, Daniels had tried to sell her story about the alleged affair to a tabloid magazine. Daniels said the man looked at her infant daughter and said: “That’s a beautiful little girl. It’d be a shame if something happened to her mom.” She did not offer any evidence to support her claim.

“It could’ve only come from one of three places,” Avenatti said. “My client, meaning she threatened herself, which makes no sense. In Touch magazine, which makes no sense, because why would they threaten my client relating to the publication of an interview in their own magazine?” (In Touch magazine in January published a 2011 interview in which Daniels talked at length about the alleged affair.)

“Or someone associated with Trump or the Trump Organization,” Avenatti added. “We think it’s pretty clear where it came from.”

Michael Cohen, Trump’s longtime personal attorney, did not respond to requests for comment Monday. His attorney, Brent H. Blakely, has previously said Cohen was not involved in making the threats and doubted the incident even occurred.

Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, has said that she signed a nondisclosure agreement shortly before the 2016 presidential election and that she received $130,000 for her silence about the alleged affair, which she said happened months after Melania Trump gave birth to son Barron. The Wall Street Journal first reported in January that Cohen arranged the payment to Daniels in October 2016, a month before the election, as part of the agreement. Cohen has said in a statement that he used his personal funds, and that neither the Trump campaign nor the Trump Organization was involved in the transaction.

In the “60 Minutes” interview, Daniels said she felt pressured to sign the agreement, as well as false statements denying the affair.

Last month, Daniels sued Trump and Essential Consultants, a limited-liability company that Cohen set up in October 2016 to use as a vehicle for the payment, to free herself from the agreement. She alleged that the agreement is “null and void” because the president didn’t sign it. Daniels later added Cohen as a defendant, accusing him of defamation for implying she had lied about the affair. The amended complaint, filed in a California federal court, cited a press statement in which Cohen said: “Just because something isn’t true doesn’t mean that it can’t cause you harm or damage.”

In his first public comment about Daniels, Trump told reporters last week that he did not know that his personal attorney had paid Daniels or where Cohen got the money. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders has repeatedly said that Trump denies the affair.

Avenatti has sought an expedited jury trial and permission to depose Trump and Cohen, each for no longer than two hours. A federal judge has denied the deposition request, saying it’s premature, but Avenatti filed a renewed motion. According to documents filed Sunday, the deposition is necessary to establish whether Trump knew of or consented to the nondisclosure agreement.

Trump and Cohen are seeking to enforce a clause in the nondisclosure agreement requiring that the matter be mediated confidentially through private arbitration. Cohen also has said that Daniels is liable for $20 million in damages for breaking the agreement.

Emma Brown, Frances Stead Sellers and Beth Reinhard contributed to this report.