According to the legal complaint filed in California state court and tweeted out by her lawyer on Tuesday, Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, signed the document on behalf of the President instead.
The porn star, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, claims in the lawsuit to have had an affair with Trump several years prior to his presidency. However, the lawsuit claims that when he was running for office and multiple women were coming forward to share stories of their own alleged encounters with the then-Republican presidential candidate, Cohen intervened in an attempt to keep Clifford from coming forward as well.
The lawsuit says Cohen has continued his attempts at silencing Clifford — including as recently as February 27, 2018.
“To be clear, the attempts to intimidate Ms. Clifford into silence and ‘shut her up’ in order to ‘protect Mr. Trump’ continue unabated,” the lawsuit states. “For example, only days ago on or about February 27, 2018, Mr. Trump’s attorney Mr. Cohen surreptitiously initiated a bogus arbitration proceeding against Ms. Clifford in Los Angeles. Remarkably, he did so without even providing Ms. Clifford with notice of the proceeding and basic due process.”
NBC News first reported on Clifford’s complaint against Trump.
Just weeks before the 2016 election, Cohen reportedly created a private LLC to pay off Clifford, The Wall Street Journal reported in January.
Following initial reports last month that Cohen had made the payment, he said in a statement that Trump “vehemently denies” any encounter between the two.
This story is breaking and will be updated.
