Jessica Drake: I’ll Testify For Stormy Daniels If She Needs Me

LOS ANGELES—Jessica Drake for the second time has publicly backed what is perhaps the most explosive and chilling claim made by Stormy Daniels in Daniels’ lawsuit against Donald Trump and Trump’s “fixer” Michael Cohen: that in 2011, a man approached her and threatened her in a Las Vegas parking lot in front of her then-infant daughter, warning Daniels to “leave Mr. Trump alone.” Now Drake says she is willing to back Daniels in court testimony if called upon. At the time in 2011, Daniels was negotiating with the tabloid InTouch Weekly to tell the story of her 2006 sexual encounter with Trump, after the magazine approached her and pledged to run the story of her affair with Trump whether she cooperated or not, according to Daniels’ attorney, Michael Avenatti. Trump in 2011 was best-known as the star of the NBC reality competition show The Apprentice, but was also already publicly considering a run for president, and Cohen had already created a web site, ShouldTrumpRun.com, promoting his client's potential presidential bid. The possibility that Trump would run for president in 2012 was taken so seriously that in March of 2011, one poll showed him as the Republican frontrunner, topping even former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, who eventually earned the party’s nomination. Drake herself in October of 2016 accused Trump of sexually abusing her, allegedly forcibly kissing her without her consent, then pursuing her, demanding to know how much she would charge him for sex. Drake first made public statements corroborating Daniels’ claim of the threat last month during an appearance on the ABC TV program Good Morning America. But this past Friday, May 25, The Washington Post published a new interview with Drake, in which she repeated her support for Daniels’ threat story, adding through her lawyer Gloria Allred that she was willing to repeat her statements under oath. Drake told the Post that Daniels told her about the threat in 2011, long before she had ever made the allegation public. She also said that Daniels told her again about the threat incident in October of 2016, following Drake’s own public sexual assault allegations against Trump. “She was warning me, I needed to be very careful,” Drake told the Post, adding that Daniels cautioned her, “Don’t be alone.” Daniels first made the threat allegation public during a CBS 60 Minutes interview that aired on March 25. In the Washington Post interview, Drake said that she did not consider herself “friends” with Daniels, but has chosen to speak out publicly in support of her former co-star, “because women need to be heard and believed.” “Drake is prepared to give her account in court to corroborate Daniels’s story,” according to Allred’s statements to The Post. Photo by Jimi Photog / Wikimedia Commons