Adult film star Stormy Daniels, whose alleged tryst with Donald Trump is at the heart of his first criminal trial, has faced off for years against the former president in courtrooms — and the court of public opinion.
After years of making pornographic films, Daniels became a household name in 2018 when she went public with allegations that she had slept with Trump over a decade earlier.
Since then she has faced an onslaught of name-calling, including from Trump himself, which she has made a point of returning blow-for-blow, with a smile on her face.
A recent documentary has however revealed that behind that tenacity, her life has been turned upside down by the saga.
Her marriage fell apart, though she has since remarried. And as Trump’s legal jeopardy has skyrocketed, the harassment against her has become ever more virulent, leading her to at times fear for her safety.
“Back in 2018 that was stuff like ‘liar,’ ‘slut,’ ‘gold digger,” she said in the film, ‘Stormy.’
“This time around, it is very different. It is direct threats, it is, ‘I’m going to come to your house and slit your throat,’ ‘your daughter should be euthanized.'”
Trump has been criminally charged with paying “hush money” to Daniels to cover up their alleged affair ahead of the 2016 election — and falsifying business records while doing so.
Stephanie from Louisiana
Stephanie Clifford — her real name, though she prefers to use her stage one — was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and raised by her mother following her parents’ divorce.
She was neglected by her family and sexually abused at age nine by an older man, she wrote in a 2018 memoir.
Despite everything, she was a good student, and passionate about horses.
To earn a living, she first turned to striptease, then the adult film industry, where she became a star actress, director and screenwriter, earning several awards.
Daniels says she first crossed paths with the real estate mogul in the summer of 2006 during a charity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe.
The actress had just made a brief appearance in the Judd Apatow film, “The 40-year-old Virgin.”
Daniels was 27 at the time and Trump 60.
According to Daniels’s account, he invited her to his suite.
She claims they went on to have what “may have been the least impressive sex I’d ever had.”
Trump has denied they ever had sexual relations, accusing Daniels of “extortion.”
What is known for sure is that Daniels received $130,000 just before the 2016 presidential election — a hush money payment.
‘Not a victim’
Once the transaction was revealed in 2018, Daniels asked courts to nullify her nondisclosure agreement with Trump and began making the rounds on television shows.
On CBS’s “60 Minutes,” she said she wanted to set the record straight.
“I’m not a victim,” she stated flatly.
And even if she was not attracted to him that night in Lake Tahoe, she said their relationship was consensual, and that she saw it as a potential career boost after Trump allegedly promised to get her on “The Apprentice.”
In the new documentary, she offers a more somber view of the experience.
“When I came out of that bathroom and Trump was there in his underwear, you know, so entitled, I remember thinking… ‘how did I get myself into this?’ I felt that I had been misled.”
“I’ve maintained it wasn’t rape in any fashion… but I didn’t say ‘no,’ because I just — I was nine years old again,” she said.
Daniels, who gave serious consideration to running for a US Senate seat from Louisiana in 2010, has a daughter, and in 2022 married her fourth husband, fellow porn actor Barrett Blade.
Daniels, who in the documentary tells viewers she is a registered Republican, became for a while a liberal hero for the way she took on the former president in public.
But her pursuits against the former president and de facto 2024 Republican nominee have in many ways backfired.
A defamation case Daniels filed against Trump in federal court was rejected, and she was subsequently ordered to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in his legal fees.
“I will go to jail before I pay a penny,” she pledged at the time.
When Trump’s hush money indictment was announced in 2023, Daniels said on social media that she was sipping champagne.
But she also spoke of her weariness.
“I’m more prepared with my legal knowledge,” she told the documentary, “but I’m also tired, like my soul is so tired.”
