Washington: Stormy Daniels, a porn star who alleges having had an affair with US President Donald Trump, has said that she was threatened in 2011 after attempting to sell her story to a magazine, a media report said.
She made the remarks on Sunday, March 25 in her first extended television interview since the news of her alleged 2006 affair emerged.
In July 2007, a year after they met, Daniels told CBS News that Trump asked to meet her privately at his bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel in Los Angeles to discuss a development regarding her possible appearance on “Celebrity Apprentice”.
According to Daniels, Trump called her the following month to say he had not been able to get her a spot on “Celebrity Apprentice”.
She said they never met again and only were intimate in that first meeting in 2006.
In May 2011, Daniels agreed to tell her story to a sister publication of In Touch magazine for $15,000.
Two former employees of the magazine told CBS News that the story never ran because after the magazine called Trump seeking a comment, his attorney Michael Cohen threatened to sue.
Daniels said she was never paid, and says a few weeks later, she was threatened by a man who approached her in Las Vegas.
“I was in a parking lot, going to a fitness class with my infant daughter… And a guy walked up on me and said to me, ‘Leave Trump alone. Forget the story’. And then he leaned around and looked at my daughter and said, ‘That’s a beautiful little girl. It’d be a shame if something happened to her mom.’ And then he was gone,” the adult film actress said.
Asked if she took it as a direct threat, Daniels said: “Absolutely… I was rattled.”
Daniels added that she never saw the man again but would be able to recognise that person.
Ahead of the interview’s airing, the President and the First Lady opted to be in different states. Trump returned to Washington from Palm Beach on Sunday, while Melania Trump will remain in Florida on a pre-scheduled spring break, her communications director said.
Trump had dinner Saturday night at Mar-a-Lago with Cohen, an informed source told CNN.
Returning to Washington on Sunday evening, Trump ignored reporters’ shouted questions about whether he would watch the interview and whether Daniels was a liar.
The interview came despite a $130,000 hush agreement struck days before the 2016 presidential election between Daniels and Cohen.
Daniels said she was violating her non-disclosure agreement and risking a $1 million fine “because it was very important to me to be able to defend myself”.
In a similar development, former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who also claims to have had a pre-presidential romance with Trump, filed a lawsuit asking that her 2016 non-disclosure agreement be annulled.
Both Trump and the White House have denied the alleged affairs.
