Porn star Stormy Daniels must pay former President Donald Trump $122,000 in legal fees that were accumulated in relation to the actor’s defamation lawsuit, an appeals court ruled on Tuesday.
Daniels sued Trump for defamation after he called her claims of being threatened to keep quiet about the fling a "total con job." A judge threw out the case in 2018, according to the Daily Mail.
A commissioner for the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Tuesday that Trump’s attorneys had "reasonably spent" more than 183 hours on an appeal of the case. The commissioner denied a request for an additional $5,150 in other fees because they weren’t itemized.
According to the BBC, the case was thrown out after 9th Circuit Court of Appeals judge Samuel James Otero said Trump's statement was protected by the First Amendment.
The Daily Mail reported that the decision came out of California at roughly the same time that Trump became the first president in US history to be charged with a crime. Trump appeared at a Manhattan courthouse to face 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree, all of which he has pleaded not guilty to.
Among the accusations made against Trump is that he made payments to Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal, failing to record these transactions accurately in his business records. The news of these accusations surfaced while he was still the president.
However, this small amount of money Daniels is set to pay Trump is a drop in the bucket compared to what she ultimately owes the former president. Harmeet Dhillon tweeted Tuesday: “Congratulations to President Trump on this final attorney fee victory in his favor this morning. Collectively, our firm obtained over $600,000 in attorney fee awards in his favor in the meritless litigation initiated by Stormy Daniels.”
Daniels has said that she “will go to jail” before she pays “a penny” to Trump.
Daniels has claimed that she had an affair in 2006 with the former president, and that she was subsequently paid $130,000 as part of a non-disclosure agreement just days before the 2016 presidential elections.
Meanwhile, Trump has been asking for financial contributions to his campaign, suggesting that he would be willing to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in order to fight the court and clear his name.
Trump posted the following on Truth Social: “If you are doing poorly, as many of you are, do not send anything. If you are doing well, which was made possible through the great policies of the Trump administration, send your contribution to donaldjtrump.com.”
Should Trump be found guilty of these crimes, it would not legally prevent him from running for president in 2024.
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