On the same day that former President Donald Trump was charged in connection to a $130K payment to Stormy Daniels, she was ordered to pay over $121K for his legal fees on top of the over $500K she already has to pay.
Stormy Daniels ordered to pay Trump $121k for his legal fees
On Tuesday, Donald Trump arrived in New York City to face arraignment on 34 felony counts related to business fraud in connection to a $130,000 hush money payment made on his behalf to adult film star Stormy Daniels.
At the very same time, 3,000 miles away, in a California courtroom, a judge for the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered Daniels to pay more than $121,000 for his legal fees, Yahoo reported.
The fees come in addition to the more than $300,000 Daniels was previously ordered to pay Trump after she lost a defamation suit against the former president in 2018.
In the 2018 defamation case, Daniels sued Trump for mocking her claim that a man had threatened her in 2011 over allegations of having an affair with Trump. The former president called a sketch of the man a “con job.”
The judge in the civil case sided with Trump, claiming that his comments were not defamation and were protected by the First Amendment.
The additional fees, amounting to over $121,000, that the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals ordered Daniels to pay were considered valid compensation for the time attorneys had “reasonably spent” at more than 183 hours on the case. The court denied a request for another $5,150 in fees because it was not itemized.
The ruling brings the total that Daniels was ordered to pay to more than $600,000, tweeted Harmeet Dillon, one of Trump’s attorneys in the case, Yahoo reported.
It’s the latest in a series of losses that have befallen the adult film star. Her former attorney, Michael Avenatti, was convicted of stealing $300,000 from her that was part of an advance for her tell-all book about her alleged affair with the former president.
In March 2022, Daniels blamed the loss of her appeal in her defamation case against Trump on Avenatti’s incompetence.
“Trump won yesterday ON A TECHNICALITY due to Avenatti’s failure to file promptly,” Daniels said at the time. “That technical ruling, although distressing, does not reflect on anything I have done or my credibility but is the result of negligence of a criminal lawyer, Michael Avenatti.”
Daniels says, “I will go to jail before I pay a penny”
In the 2018 ruling, when Stormy Daniels was ordered to pay Trump more than $300,000 after losing the defamation case, she adamantly stated she would go to jail rather than pay the former president.
“I will go to jail before I pay a penny,” Daniels said in a tweet after a federal appeals court in March 2022 upheld an earlier decision ordering her to pay Trump $300,000 in attorneys’ fees after losing her defamation case, The Hill reported.
