Stormy Daniels - Full Disclosure

My friends were all stuck in traffic, so I was alone when Gina came by with the dress. When she came into the suite, she walked in with a bearded man in a Gucci shirt who I later found out was her boyfriend. And Keith Davidson.

I gave Gina a look, and she knew exactly what I was thinking. “Oh, we just want to talk about possible answers for you to give Jimmy,” she said.

Got it. Media training. Nothing odd about that. Right?

Gina distracted me with literally something shiny—a gorgeous dress in a similar color to the AVN one, but lacy and shorter. And then we sat down at the glass table in the Marilyn suite to talk about what I could say. Gucci guy, who I didn’t know at all, sat next to me. I then learned that Cohen had once again reached out to Davidson.

This should have been my red flag in the moment. Why are Michael Cohen and Keith Davidson always talking?

I was then given yet another statement to sign. I sat up to read it. “The fact of the matter is that each party to this alleged affair denied its existence in 2006, 2011, 2016, 2017, and now again in 2018,” the signed statement read. “I am not denying this affair because I was paid ‘hush money’ as has been reported in overseas-owned tabloids. I am denying this affair because it never happened.”

I panicked. I admit it, I panicked. I didn’t know who the Gucci guy was. Was he the one threatening me? Did he have a gun? Even though I knew the statement was complete bullshit, I picked up the pen and signed my name.

But I purposely signed it wrong. “Stormy Daniels” has a very distinct signature. I have signed my boobs on magazine covers for many years. I signed the statement like it was my first day as a grown-up, girly and bubby. I wanted to signal there was something amiss here.

My girlfriends showed up. I didn’t say a word to them, and if I seemed shaken to them, they probably thought I was uncharacteristically nervous about going on live TV. In no time, Michael Cohen had the statement, and he released it three hours before the show. Thanks, Keith Davidson. Always advocating for his clients, that guy.

Jimmy had a printout of the statement at his desk, and with no tip-off whatsoever from me, he brought up the signature right away on the air.

“This is what fascinates me,” he said. “The signature on your original statement does not match the signature on this statement.” He pulled out a bunch of signed photos he’d found on the internet as examples of my real signature. “Am I getting at anything? Did you sign this letter that was released today?”

“I don’t know, did I?” I said. “That does not look like my signature, does it?”

I was scared to say too much, so I ended up looking like a complete idiot. I couldn’t answer the most basic questions. He had this bit planned where he gave me a Stormy Muppet so I could talk to his Donald Trump Muppet. Jimmy was amazing, and such a class act, but I couldn’t help him. I felt my hands were tied.

Everyone thinks I’m a buffoon, I thought. Jimmy was so understanding and kind. He could tell I’d been railroaded. He took me aside afterward and told me that when I was ready to speak, he could devote the whole show to it. We could change the whole format, even pretaping it and allowing me to see it so I felt more comfortable. “Just tell me when you’re ready,” he said. He also donated to my legal fund and urged others to do the same. It was so odd to have someone genuinely looking out for me, offering to help. He has privately checked in on me, and later, he went on his show to ask viewers to join him in donating to my legal fund. “I never thought giving money to a porn star would be considered an act of patriotism,” he told his audience, “but then again I never thought a guy who got into a Twitter war with Cher would become president.”

That night I went back to my suite and canceled the appearance on The View . It would just be more of me sitting dumbly—humiliated and unable to stand up for myself. Because I wasn’t able to say anything, people could come to their own conclusions and put whatever motives or labels they wanted on me. The Republican Trump fans, weirdly, thought I was great because I was obviously lying to protect the president. The liberals could just write me off as a set of tits with no brain. I could do nothing. My husband was on the couch, my kid couldn’t watch TV, and America—no actually, the whole world—thought I was at worst a liar and at best an idiot.

In the bed, I looked up at the mirror on the ceiling, sighed, and went into a sexy pose to make myself laugh. “Hey, Marilyn,” I said to the empty room. “Feel free to jump in anytime with some advice.”

I had a few days off around Valentine’s Day, so I went home to Texas to be with Glen and our daughter. I’d put in a ten-thousand-dollar alarm system to be safe, but this was before I realized that any time paparazzi saw a gap in my schedule, they figured it was worth camping out to get shots of “porn star Stormy Daniels” and her family. The morning of February 13, I was up early sipping coffee in my mug with Elsa from Frozen on it, just checking my messages to see who was calling me a whore that day. You know, just a working mom starting her day.

I nearly spit out my coffee when I saw the Daily Beast headline: TRUMP’S LAWYER MICHAEL COHEN IS SHOPPING A BOOK ABOUT THE FIRST FAMILY, STORMY DANIELS, AND RUSSIA. This fool had the nerve to draw up an NDA saying that Trump and I were supposed to forget each other existed, and now he was pitching publishers using my goddamn name? In his book proposal, with the shitty title Trump Revolution: From The Tower to The White House, Understanding Donald J. Trump, Cohen promised to tell all about his role as a fixer for the family. “No issue was too big, too sticky or too oddball for me to tackle,” Cohen wrote in the proposal, which the Daily Beast said it obtained after it was sent to multiple publishers for consideration. “I saw it all, handled it all. And still do.” The article said Cohen promised to clarify his role in the “unfortunate saga” involving me.

And even the proposal had a threat. “There truly is a method to his madness, to quote that old saw, and people who think otherwise can quickly get buried,” Cohen said. “Steve Bannon comes to mind, but there are plenty of others who are now six feet under due to this basic miscalculation.”

Cohen confirmed the contents of the proposal, telling the Daily Beast, “I have been working on a book and am extremely thankful that it has been well received and sought after by multiple publishers.”

This dim bulb Cohen was out there selling a book on my name, but I was the only person taking this NDA seriously? I can’t comment, profit, or defend myself?

Right on the heels of that, Cohen announced that he had paid me the $130,000 out of his own pocket. “In a private transaction in 2016, I used my own personal funds to facilitate a payment of $130,000 to Ms. Stephanie Clifford,” he said in a statement to The New York Times . “Neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Ms. Clifford, and neither reimbursed me for the payment, either directly or indirectly. The payment to Ms. Clifford was lawful, and was not a campaign contribution or a campaign expenditure by anyone.” He concluded, “Just because something isn’t true doesn’t mean that it can’t cause you harm or damage. I will always protect Mr. Trump.”

It was a big day for Cohen flapping his gums. Could he really do this and not invalidate the NDA? I got out the contract and read it again. The last time I’d looked at the NDA was when I signed it in the trunk of a car.