The Trump Presidency
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Stormy Daniels' lawsuit against Trump and his lawyer gets bigger and better ... Michael D. Cohen, Trump's personal lawyer, has admitted to making a $130,000 payment to a woman who alleged an affair with Trump.

Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

Stormy Daniels' lawsuit against Trump and his lawyer gets bigger and better Michael D. Cohen, Trump's personal lawyer, has admitted to making a $130,000 payment to a woman who alleged an affair with Trump. Stormy Daniels, Donald Trump, Michael Cohen RSS REBLOGGED BY Daily Kos TAGS DonaldTrump MichaelCohen StormyDaniels Share this article Stormy Daniels has amended her lawsuit against Donald Trump to include two key new points: a defamation claim against Trump’s longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen, and an argument that the non-disclosure agreement Daniels signed isn’t valid because the $130,00 hush money payment from Cohen to Daniels was in violation of federal election law. Cohen defamed Daniels, the lawsuit now says, by implying on February 13 that she was lying about her 2006 affair with Trump, even as he paid her six figures to not talk about it. Also: Besides accusing Cohen of defamation, the amended complaint broadens Daniels’s contention that the confidentiality agreement was illegal, because it lacked Trump’s signature. The new complaint says the payment violated federal laws that impose limits on campaign donations and require those donations to be publicly reported. [...] The nondisclosure agreement included a clause requiring any disputes to be settled in private arbitration, where the matter was being handled before Daniels’s lawsuit. Cohen and Trump have said in court filings that they intend to try to force the matter back into private arbitration. The amended complaint argues that the clause requiring private arbitration is invalid. Secret arbitration would hide an allegedly illegal campaign contribution and violate “public policy by suppressing speech on a matter of enormous public concern,” the complaint says. Using the likely illegality of the payment to keep the affair quiet as a way to undo the agreement to keep the affair quiet—very nice. Daniels and her attorney, Michael Avenatti, continue to be some of Trump’s most formidable foes.