Washington:
Adult film star Stormy Daniels, whose alleged tryst with Donald Trump is at the center of her first criminal trial, has faced off against the former president in courtrooms and the court of public opinion over the years.
After years of making pornographic films, Daniels became a household name in 2018 when she alleged that she had slept with Trump a decade earlier.
He has since faced an onslaught of name-calling, including from Trump himself, which he has made a point of returning blows with a smile on his face.
However, a recent documentary reveals that behind this tenacity, her life has been turned upside down by the story.
His marriage broke up, though he has since remarried. And as Trump’s legal threat has skyrocketed, the harassment against her has become even more serious, causing her to fear for her own safety at times.
“In 2018, there were things like ‘liar,’ ‘slut,’ ‘golddigger,'” she said in the film “Stormy.”
“This time, it’s very different, it’s direct threats, ‘I will come to your house and cut your throat,’ ‘Your daughter must be brutally murdered.’
Trump has been criminally accused of paying Daniels “hush money” to cover up her alleged affair before the 2016 election — and falsifying business records in the process.
Stephanie from Louisiana
Stephanie Clifford – her real name, though she prefers to use her first stage – was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and raised by her mother after her parents divorced.
She wrote in a 2018 memoir that she was neglected by her family and sexually abused by an older man at the age of nine.
Despite everything, she was a good student, and passionate about horses.
To earn a living, she first turned to striptease, then the adult film industry, where she became a star actress, director and screenwriter, and won several awards.
Daniels says he first crossed paths with the real estate mogul in the summer of 2006 during a charity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe.
The actress recently had a cameo in the Judd Apatow film “The 40-Year-Old Virgin”.
Daniel was 27 at the time and Trump was 60.
According to Daniels’ account, he invited her into his suite.
He claims they had what “may have been the least impressive sex I’ve ever had.”
Trump has accused Daniels of “extortion” and denied they ever had sex.
What is known for sure is that Daniels received $130,000 — a hush money payment — just before the 2016 presidential election.
‘not a victim’
Once the transaction was revealed in 2018, Daniels asked the courts to void her non-disclosure agreement with Trump and began discussing it on television shows.
On CBS’s “60 Minutes,” she said she wanted to set the record straight.
“I’m not a victim,” she said bluntly.
And even if she wasn’t attracted to him that night in Lake Tahoe, she said their relationship was consensual, and that after Trump allegedly promised to get her on “The Apprentice,” she Seen as a potential career boost.
In the new documentary, she takes a more serious view of the experience.
“When I came out of that bathroom and Trump was there in his underwear, you know, so entitled, I remember thinking… ‘How did I get myself into that?’ I felt I had been misled.”
“I’ve maintained that it wasn’t rape in any way… but I didn’t say ‘no,’ because I just — I was nine years old again,” she said.
Daniels, who seriously considered running for a U.S. Senate seat from Louisiana in 2010, has one daughter, and in 2022 married her fourth husband, fellow porn star Barrett Blade.
Daniels, who tells viewers in the documentary that she is a registered Republican, briefly became a liberal hero for the way she took on the former president in public.
But his pursuit of the former president and de facto 2024 Republican nominee has backfired in several ways.
Daniels’ defamation suit against Trump was dismissed in federal court and she was later ordered to pay millions of dollars in legal fees.
“I’ll go to jail before I pay a dime,” she vowed at the time.
When Trump’s hush money indictment was announced in 2023, Daniels said on social media that she was drinking champagne.
But he also mentioned his exhaustion.
“I’m more prepared with my legal knowledge, but I’m also tired, like my soul is very tired,” she told the documentary.
(Other than the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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