The Los Angeles connections to Donald Trump’s hush payment to porn star Stormy Daniels
As Michael Avenatti dictates tweets from federal prison, the former president's arraignment reignites a saga the California lawyer pushed into the spotlight in 2018.
UPDATE: Update: 9th Circuit Commissioner Lisa Fitzgerald issued her ruling today on Trump’s final fee request, ordering Daniels to pay $121,972.56. She rejected Trump’s request for an additional $5,150 because his attorneys didn’t include an itemized list of their work.
Former President Donald Trump’s historic criminal arraignment today is in Manhattan, but the origins of his public dispute with porn star Stormy Daniels are in Los Angeles, where their fight over attorney fees remains open.
The 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals still is considering a $127,122.56 request from Trump’s lawyers related to a defamation lawsuit filed in 2018 by Daniels’ now-imprisoned lawyer Michael Avenatti.
Daniels already owes Trump nearly $500,000 for the federal lawsuit: $292,052.33 for the Trump’s trial court fees and another $245,209.67 for fees related to Daniels’ unsuccessful appeal of now-retired U.S. District Judge S. James Otero’s dismissal order.
The defamation claim concerned a tweet Trump sent on April 18, 2018, after Avenatti and Daniels released a sketch of a man she said threatened her in 2011 to stay quiet about her affair with Trump, which she said occurred in 2006 or 2007.
The additional fee request still pending is for Daniels’ separate unsuccessful appeal of Otero’s $292,052.33 attorney fee award. That appeal was an attempt by Daniels’ new lawyer Clark Brewster to rectify a missed deadline by Avenatti that doomed her appeal of the dismissal order.
And to complicate any already complicated money fight, there’s another fee flap at play, and it directly relates to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office new grand jury indictment against Trump.
It stems from the first lawsuit Avenatti filed on Daniels’ behalf against Trump in 2018, before the defamation lawsuit: A state court case that sought to have Daniels released from a nondisclosure agreement she signed with Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen over an affair she said she had with Trump around 2006.
The agreement, struck 11 days before the 2016 presidential election, included Cohen paying Daniels $130,000, which is the payment at the heart of Cohen’s 2018 federal indictment and the new New York state court charges against Trump. The money was to buy Daniels’ silence and prevent her scheduled interview with the National Enquirer.
Daniels’ lawsuit over the nondisclosure deal fared better for her than her federal defamation lawsuit.
Though Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Robert B. Broadbelt III dismissed the complaint after he deemed the agreement nonenforceable, the judge made a landmark finding by directly linking Trump to the true identity of David Dennison, the signed name on the agreement alongside Peggy Peterson a.k.a Daniels.
The lawsuit wasn’t the first publication of Trump’s deal with Daniels: The Wall Street Journal detailed the $130,000 payment in a Jan. 12, 2018, article. But Avenatti’s brash appeal to the mainstream media made the dispute one of the biggest news stories of 2018. It also pushed new information into the public realm: On March 9, 2018, three days after Avenatti filed the suit, he publicly disclosed emails showing Cohen arranged a wire transfer for the money using his Trump Organization email.
Federal agents raided Cohen’s home and office one month later. He pleaded guilty in August 2018 to eight federal felonies in the Southern District of New York for tax and campaign finance crimes related to Daniels’ $130,000. That same month, Judge Broadbelt declared Daniels to be the prevailing party in the lawsuit over the nondisclosure deal, which meant Trump had to pay her legal bills. The judge determined the amount to be $44,100, and California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal rejected Trump’s appeal because of a missed deadline.
Then in November, Judge Broadbelt ordered Trump to pay Daniels an additional $54,436.25 to cover the money she spent defending Trump’s unsuccessful appeal of the $44,100 award.
But the near $100,000 tab for Trump will be applied to the near $500,000 Daniels owes him so far over the federal lawsuit, so Trump is still far and ahead the winner in the somewhat head-spinning litigation.
Brewster, a lawyer in Tulsa, Oklahoma, announced on March 15 that he and Daniels had met with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office regarding Trump.
The charges reportedly are related to the alleged falsification of business records regarding Trump’s reimbursement of the $130,000 to Cohen. Trump has denied ever having a sexual relationship with Daniels. Daniels wrote about their encounter in her book, Full Disclosure. She also addressed it during Avenatti's criminal trial for defrauding her, testifying, “I don’t consider getting cornered when I come out of a bathroom to be having an affair.”
Brewster took over Daniels’ representation after she fired Avenatti in March 2019, and he initiated the Southern District of New York investigation into Avenatti’s crimes against her by notifying prosecutors of Avenatti’s possible embezzlement related to Full Disclosure.
I met Brewster when he spent a day watching testimony in Avenatti’s Central District of California criminal trial in Santa Ana back in August 2021, and I saw him again in Manhattan in January 2022 for Avenatti’s trial for defrauding Daniels.
I also saw Cohen: He and I were the first two people outside the federal courthouse at 500 Pearl St. early Jan. 24, 2022, for opening statements. He returned for Daniels’ testimony.
I learned a lot in New York, including how Avenatti met Daniels. It was through Sean Macias, principal of Macias Counsel, Inc., in Glendale.
Macias’s testimony revealed that not only had he introduced Daniels to Avenatti when she was looking for a lawyer to sue Trump, he helped Avenatti secure $250,000 from celebrity attorney Mark Geragos, after Avenatti complained he couldn’t make his law firm’s payroll and was facing eviction. (Geragos went on to be Avenatti’s co-counsel in the Nike case that led to his extortion conviction.)
After Avenatti got the money, he paid Daniels a long-overdue book contract payment he’d received for her but spent on himself. Still, when he received her next $148,750 payment, he stole that, too, and she to this day has never received it.
Those two payments are at the center of Avenatti’s wire fraud and aggravated identity theft convictions involving Daniels. He was sentenced last June to four years in prison for those convictions, then given an additional 14 years by Senior U.S. District Judge James Selna in Santa Ana for stealing $12 million from clients in California.
But even with Avenatti’s incarceration, he’s found someone to tweet for him. The Twitter account that helped propel him to fame in 2018 has been weighing in on the grand jury investigation and Trump’s indictment.
Brewster is also speaking out, including in a televised interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper.
Which reminds me: Brewster currently is suing one of Cooper’s longtime close friends, Luke Janklow, on Daniels’ behalf.
Janklow is the son of the late Morton Janklow, a legendary Manhattan literary agent and founder of Janklow & Nesbit. He was Daniels’ agent when he agreed to reroute her book contract payments to Avenatti after Avenatti used Daniels’ digital signature without her permission. I saw Janklow testify in the New York trial, and he said he met Avenatti through Cooper, who’s been his close friend for decades.
All this rekindled attention on Daniels may have spurred action in Daniels’ lawsuit against Janklow: U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil on March 30 issued her order on Janklow’s motion to dismiss, dismissing a breach of fiduciary claim against Janklow and Janklow & Nesbit and a breach of contact claim Janklow but keeping a breach of contract claim against the company. The motion had been fully briefed since June 30, 2022.
Brewster told me regarding Judge Vyskocil’s order, “We are encouraged that the Court kept her claim alive against the corporation and will diligently seek justice from that party.”
I’m keeping an eye out for the 9th Circuit’s ruling on Trump’s final $127,122.56 fee request against Daniels. Meanwhile, I don’t believe it will be difficult to find coverage of Trump’s arraignment, though restrictions apparently are tight, including a ban on electronics. Politico reports, “Reporters will be allowed to enter the courtroom on a first-come, first-served basis. The line to enter had already begun forming by 3 p.m. Monday afternoon, according to a reporter on the scene. The proceedings are set to begin at 2:15 p.m. Tuesday.” That’s Eastern time.
UPDATE: Update: 9th Circuit Commissioner Lisa Fitzgerald issued her ruling today on Trump’s final fee request, ordering Daniels to pay $121,972.56. She rejected Trump’s request for an additional $5,150 because his attorneys didn’t include an itemized list of their work.
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