A Stormy Daniels Letter Resurfaces

From the Gateway Pundit yesterday:

This afternoon, President Trump shared an image of a 2018 letter from Stormy Daniels on his Truth Social Account.

Above the image of the letter from the porn star, turned darling of the Democrat Party, President Trump wrote:

“LOOK WHAT I JUST FOUND!”

He asked, “WILL THE FAKE NEWS REPORT IT??”

The image and part of the post are shown above. (Click on the image for a larger view.) It reads in part:

Over the past few weeks, I have been asked countless times to comment on reports of an alleged sexual relationship I had with Donald Trump many, many, many years ago.

The fact of the matter is that each party to this alleged affair denied its existence in 2006, 20011, 2016, 2017 and now again in 2018. I am not denying this affair because I was paid “hush money” as has been reported in overseas owned tabloids. I am denying this affair because it never happened.

This piqued my curiosity, since I posted two weeks ago on Michael Avenatti's reported allegation that the Trump hush money story was cooked up by Michael Cohen to extort the Trump Organization before the 2016 election, and in fact it was done while Cohen and Daniels were themselves having an affair.

Just about all anyone can conclude at this point is that the whole thing is hokum from start to finish, and anything anyone can possibly say about it is unprovable. But it turns out that this isn't the first time even this purported letter has come out. Factcheck.org had this to say about an earlier incarnation of the story in 2023:

Trump has denied the affair, claiming the payment was “to stop the false and extortionist accusations made by her about an affair.” Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, has said multiple times that she and Trump did have sex.

But a January 2018 letter in which Daniels denied that they had intercourse is being misleadingly cited by some conservatives on social media as proof that there is no case against Trump.

Daniels has said that, although the letter was not true, she signed it under pressure from her representatives, who warned that her life could become “hell in many different ways” if she did not sign it.

She doesn't identity her "representatives" in the statement, but according to Wikipedia, Michael Avenatti filed a lawsuit on her behalf against Trump for defamation in March 2018. According to the same entry, she terminated her arrangemeent with Avenatti in March 2019. In other words, it's hard not to conclude that it was Avenatti who pressured her to do the letter.

That defamation suit has its own twisted history:

Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, tried to sue Trump for defamation in 2018, specifically taking aim at a tweet attacking her account of being threatened by a stranger in 2011 to stay quiet on her Trump story. Trump attacked the account as a "con job, playing the Fake News Media."

Federal Judge S. James Otero dismissed the lawsuit, saying Trump's tweet constitutes " 'rhetorical hyperbole' normally associated with politics and public discourse" and is protected by the First Amendment.

Daniels tried to appeal the decision in 2022, saying her then-attorney Michael Avenatti filed the defamation suit "without my permission and against my wishes." But a judge ruled against her, leaving her on the hook for nearly $300,000 in Trump's legal fees.

So it looks as though Avenatti and Daniels will say just about anything on one day and contradict themselves on any other day. In any case, probably connected with Avenatti's reported claim that Michael Cohen and Daniels had cooked up the Trump story in an attempt to extort him prior to the 2016 election,

Former President Trump’s legal team on Monday asked the judge in his hush money case to subpoena adult film actress Stormy Daniels’ communications with Michael Cohen, the former president’s ex-fixer. . .

In a letter to Justice Juan Merchan, Trump’s attorneys asked the judge to enforce a subpoena for the communications Daniels — whose real name is Stephanie Clifford — had with Cohen and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who are both expected to testify in the hush money trial starting later this month.

It sounds as though this trial, and the cross-examination of witnesses like Stormy Daniels and Michael Cohen, is going to be quite a circus. So far, the outcomes of trials and court hearings in the various lawfare cases against Trump have served only to create figures of ridicule like Judge Engoron, Fani Willis, and Nathan Wade, and their cumulative effect has been to drive Trump higher in the polls.

It's hard to avoid thinking the New York criminal trial will have an equivalent effect -- although delaying any such trial is Criminal Defense 101, I have a feeling that the efforts by Trump's attorneys to delay it here are actually something of a head fake, and they can't wait to get this bizarre assortment of crooks, perjurers, and hookers on the stand.

Whether the trial is completely rigged and the verdict a foregone conclusion, the whole affair will play out against this cast of characters, and finding Trump guilty will only boost his standing. I think Trump himself is fully aware of this, probably more than anyone.