Former US President Donald Trump has won a significant legal victory against adult film star Stormy Daniels.
Donald Trump ( Photo: NPR )
Donald Trump has won against Stormy Daniels
A US court has ordered Daniels to pay $122,000 in additional legal fees to Trump, in addition to the $500,000-plus in court-ordered payments to his lawyers that she was already asked to pay. The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals has sided with Trump, enabling him to recoup legal fees from Daniels, who had lost a defamation suit against him.
Daniels had alleged that she had an affair with Trump and was paid $130,000 in “hush money” during the 2016 presidential campaign to keep quiet about the relationship, which Trump has always denied. In 2018, Daniels sued Trump after he called her allegation a “total con job.”
However, the case was dismissed in October of that year by District Judge S. James Otero, who said that Trump’s statement was protected by the First Amendment.
Daniels was ordered to pay Trump around $293,000 in legal fees
While a failed appeal at a later date cost her a further $245,000. The latest ruling is a significant boost for the former US President, who has just been charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in New York. The ruling has been celebrated by Trump’s lawyer Harmeet Dhillon, who took to Twitter to say that “Collectively, our firm obtained over $600,000 in attorney fee awards in his favor in the meritless litigation initiated by Stormy Daniels.”
Donald Trump Jr. also took to Twitter to comment on the decision, saying that he was glad Daniels’ T-shirt sales were booming as she would be able to afford to pay Trump. The lawsuit is unrelated to Trump’s recent arrest and charges in New York on Tuesday.
Daniels had asked the appeals court to knock down another award, but the court declined the request, stating that “Trump’s attorneys reasonably spent the requested 183.35 hours preparing a motion to dismiss, a reply to the opposition to the motion, two extension motions, the answering brief, and the fee application.”
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