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Stormy Daniels' hush money suit dismissed by judge

Stormy Daniels' hush money suit dismissed by judge
Stormy Daniels' hush money suit dismissed by judge

A federal judge on Thursday dismissed a lawsuit brought against President Donald Trump and his former lawyer by Stormy Daniels, a pornographic film actress who was paid to keep quiet about an alleged affair with Trump before the 2016 election.

The suit, brought a year ago in California, had sought to release Daniels from the nondisclosure agreement she had signed. As part of her arrangement, she received $130,000 in hush money through the president’s personal lawyer at the time, Michael Cohen.

As he tossed out the case this week, Judge S. James Otero, of U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, called the legal argument moot, given that Daniels had not been held to the terms of the agreement.

Indeed, Daniels and her lawyer, Michael Avenatti, have spoken freely about the arrangement since the filing last March. The lawsuit led to escalating national attention that culminated in Cohen’s pleading guilty to related campaign-finance crimes last summer.

Months earlier, well before Daniels had sued and Cohen had been charged, the lawyer legally pressured her to keep silent, initiating private arbitration proceedings against her in efforts to prevent her from speaking out.

As news of the suit’s dismissal broke Thursday, Daniels was preparing to promote her new book, “Full Disclosure,” around the country, including an expected appearance in Washington next week.

“The court found that Ms. Daniels received everything she asked for by way of the lawsuit,” Avenatti said by phone Thursday. “She won.”

Last fall, the same federal judge had dismissed a separate suit filed by Daniels against the president in which she said he had defamed her on Twitter. As part of that decision last year, Clifford was ordered to pay the president’s legal fees.

A lawyer for Trump, Charles J. Harder, called the decision this week a “total victory.” With the lawyers’ fees and sanctions, he said, the ruling amounted to an “award in the president’s favor totaling $293,000.”

Though Avenatti also claimed victory for his client Thursday, he had not received all he had requested. In the complaint filed last year, Avenatti did not just seek to invalidate the nondisclosure agreement. He also requested reimbursement for the costs of the litigation, as well as “further relief as the court may deem just and proper.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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