Stormy weather over White House

Stormy Daniels' lawyer seeks to depose Trump over $130,000 payment

By LORRAINE WOELLERT

Stormy Daniels is seeking to question President Donald Trump under oath about a nondisclosure contract that paid her to keep quiet about their alleged relationship.

In a filing late Tuesday night in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, the adult film star, whose given name is Stephanie Clifford, asked permission to question Trump for two hours. Her lawyer also is seeking to depose the president’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, who arranged the hush money deal with Daniels.

“It is firmly established that a sitting president is not afforded special protection from a civil suit regarding conduct before he or she entered office,” wrote Daniels’ lawyer, Michael Avenatti.

He cited the landmark 1997 Supreme Court ruling in Clinton v. Jones, which established that a sitting president isn’t immune from civil lawsuits related to activity that occurred before he took office.

In that case, President Bill Clinton had been accused of harassing a state employee, Paula Jones, while he was governor of Arkansas.

In an interview Wednesday morning on “CBS This Morning,” Avenatti said he’s merely seeking the truth.

“We want to know the truth about what the president knew, when he knew it and what he did about it,” Avenatti says.

In another late filing, Avenatti also requests a jury trial for the case.

In the court filing Daniels’ lawyer also said that the nondisclosure agreement and its mandatory arbitration clause “violate public policy by suppressing speech on a matter of enormous public concern about a candidate for President of the United States, mere weeks before the election.”

Cohen is seeking to move the Daniels complaint out of court and into private arbitration. He has claimed the payment to Daniels was made out of his own pocket, not Trump’s.

In October 2016, less than two weeks before Election Day, Daniels signed a contract to remain silent about her alleged affair with Trump in exchange for $130,000. The agreement was reached as the Trump campaign was trying to control damage from a leaked “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump bragged about grabbing women.

Cohen and the White House did not immediately return requests for comment.