Citing Free Speech, Trump Seeks End To Stormy Daniels Libel Suit

In April, Stormy Daniels filed a second lawsuit against Donald Trump, this time for defamation, after Trump posted a message on Twitter strongly implying that Daniels was lying about a man who physically threatened her in a Las Vegas parking lot in 2011. At the time, Daniels was preparing to discuss in public her claim of a sexual encounter with Trump for an interview by InTouch Weekly magazine—an interview that was killed by the magazine but finally published, as AVN.com reported, in January of this year. Daniels said that, in front of her then-infant daughter, the man warned her to “leave Trump alone.” In April of this year, Daniels and her lawyer, Michael Avenatti, released a forensic sketch of the man Daniels says threatened her. Trump responded on Twitter by calling the man “non-existent” and the sketch “a total con job.” Now, in a Monday federal court fling, Trump’s lawyers say that the tweet was simply Trump exercising his “free speech rights on matters of public concern,” and that the lawsuit was “designed to chill” Trump’s free speech rights, according to a Reuters report.  The court filing also said that to sue for defamation, Daniels must show that she was harmed by Trump’s tweet. Instead, Trump’s lawyers claimed, Daniels has “capitalized” on the notoriety stemming from her association with Trump, in particular with her ongoing tour of strip clubs, “for which she admittedly is being paid at least four times her normal appearance fee.” The claim by Trump that Daniels is trying to “chill” his constitutionally protected speech rights stands in stark contrast to Trump’s own publicly stated views on United States libel law. As recently as January, Trump slammed  U.S. libel law as “a sham and a disgrace,” while calling for statutes to be changed in a way that makes winning libel suits easier for plaintffs. “We are going to take a strong look at our country’s libel laws, so that when somebody says something that is false and defamatory about someone, that person will have meaningful recourse in our courts,” Trump stated at a White House cabinet meeting, according to The New York Times, following the publication of the book Fire and Fury by reporter Michael Wolff. The book painted a highly unflattering picture of the Trump administration’s inner workings. The new Trump court filing also took a swipe at Daniels' profession as a porn industry performer, saying, "There is nothing about [Daniels’] career as an adult entertainer that requires a reputation for honesty.”  The claim by Trump, which appears to say that porn performers are inherently dishonest, echoes public statements made earlier this year by Trump’s legal spokesperson, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who said that women with careers as adult entertainment performers “lack credibility” and “don’t have a reputation.”  Photos By Mark Nozell, Wikimedia Commons/ABC TV Screen Capture