His truth
In the United States, there is no longer any need to introduce Stormy Daniels, at the heart of the criminal trial which opened Monday April 15 in New York against Donald Trump, president from 2017 to 2021 and Republican candidate for the next presidential election. The case dates back to 2018, when the Wall Street Journal reveals that the billionaire’s lawyer paid, in the last days of the 2016 presidential campaign, 130,000 dollars (around 122,000 euros) to the pornographic film actress, to buy her silence regarding a sexual relationship that she claims having had with Trump in 2006, which the latter denies. Former president pleads not guilty. He is accused of having falsified accounting documents from the Trump Organization, notably passing off as campaign expenses the sum spent to buy the silence of the actress. If she has already declared that Donald Trump does not deserve prison, Stormy Daniels intends to tell her truth on the stand.
A porn star
In the civil registry, the 45-year-old Texan who has 1.3 million subscribers on X is called Stephanie Clifford. Coming from a modest family, she grew up in a difficult neighborhood in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. After her parents divorced, she was raised by her mother, whom she described as failing. The forty-year-old has recounted on several occasions having been sexually abused by a neighbor at the age of 9. Passionate about horses, she considered becoming a veterinarian, but started doing striptease and adult films. Strong-headed, the young woman with flowery language made a name for herself as an actress, then a director, and won several prizes awarded by the X-rated film industry.
A well-attended interview
Stormy Daniels crossed paths with Donald Trump in 2006, during a golf tournament at Lake Tahoe (Nevada). She is 27, he is 60. According to her story, he invites her to dinner, but when she finds him in his hotel suite, the story ends in a bed. In 2018, his first interview on the show “60 Minutes”, on CBS, attracted 22 million viewers. If she always assured that she was not a victim, she also said that she was not attracted to him. “I didn’t say no because I was 9 again, she explains in Stormy, a documentary released in March. To this day, I blame myself for not having pissed him off at that moment, which might have made him think twice before doing the same thing to someone else. »
A controversial figure
A feminist icon for some, an unscrupulous opportunist for others, Stormy Daniels rides the notoriety that the affair brings her, fills up during the striptease tours that she goes on around the country and writes her Memoirs. But his standoff with Donald Trump has a price. Harassed and threatened by supporters of the Republican presidential candidate, she fears for her safety. Her marriage to her daughter’s father ended in divorce. She also owes several hundred thousand dollars in legal fees to the former president for a lost defamation trial. Not to mention the betrayal of her most faithful ally, her former lawyer, Michael Avenatti, today in prison for having defrauded various clients, including her.