# Stormy Daniels **Stormy Daniels** (legal name Stephanie Clifford) is the adult-film actress and director whose **$130,000 hush-money payment** in October 2016 became the basis of [[Donald Trump]]'s only criminal conviction. She matters to this KB as a witness and litigant, not a political actor. Her story runs through the three systems the vault tracks around Trump: the tabloid "catch and kill" apparatus, the use of litigation as intimidation, and the prosecution that the right calls "lawfare." ## The payment Daniels said she had a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006, which he denies. In the last weeks of the 2016 campaign, just after the *Access Hollywood* tape, [[Michael Cohen]] paid her $130,000 through a shell company in exchange for a nondisclosure agreement. American Media's [[David Pecker]] and [[The National Enquirer]] had been running the same operation for other women. See [[Catch and Kill]]. The *Wall Street Journal* revealed the payment in January 2018. Cohen pleaded guilty to campaign-finance crimes in August 2018 and said Trump had directed the payment. ## The litigation war Between 2018 and 2020 she was on both ends of lawsuits: - She **sued to void the NDA**, and she sued Trump for defamation over a tweet calling her story a "con job." The defamation suit was dismissed, and she was ordered to pay Trump's legal fees. His lawyer in part of that fight was [[Charles Harder]], the media-litigation specialist. - Her own lawyer, **Michael Avenatti**, became a cable celebrity. He was later convicted in 2022 of stealing roughly $300,000 of her book advance. The fee judgments against her are part of the vault's picture of litigation as a weapon: the payer won, and the payee paid. ## The trial She testified for the prosecution in May 2024 in [[Alvin Bragg]]'s case. The defense attacked her credibility across two days of cross-examination, and Justice [[Juan Merchan]] denied a mistrial motion over the level of detail in her account. Trump was convicted on May 30, 2024 and given an unconditional discharge on Jan. 10, 2025. He is still trying to overturn the conviction. On Aug. 28, 2026 a federal judge rejected his third attempt to move the case to federal court. ## Why she matters The conviction the right calls political rests on the paperwork used to hide her payment. The underlying act, a payoff to keep a story out of a presidential campaign, is the kind of information control the vault documents across [[Catch and Kill]], NDAs and litigation threats. Daniels is one of the few targets of that system who went public and stayed public. ## See also - [[Alvin Bragg]] · [[Michael Cohen]] · [[David Pecker]] · [[The National Enquirer]] · [[Catch and Kill]] - [[Charles Harder]] · [[Juan Merchan]] · [[Trump Indictments Timeline]] - [[Donald Trump - death and destruction]]