3 women claim to have been paid hush money

Avenatti now representing 3 women who claim to have been paid hush money by Trump

By LOUIS NELSON

Michael Avenatti, the attorney representing porn actress Stormy Daniels in her lawsuits against President Donald Trump, now also represents three additional women who claim to have had affairs with Trump that they were paid to stay silent about.

The Associated Press reported Thursday that Avenatti announced his new clients at a forum in West Hollywood, California, but declined to name them. He said he had evidence of the three women’s respective affairs with the president but was “not at liberty to share” it. All three women, he said, were paid “hush money” before the 2016 election.

Avenatti emerged months ago as a prominent figure in the president’s legal battles, representing Daniels in her legal quest to be freed from a nondisclosure agreement related to a one-night affair she claims to have had with the president. She is also suing the president for defamation over a post to his Twitter account in which he dismissed Daniels’ account of an unknown man approaching her and warning her to “leave Trump alone” as a “total con job.”

Trump has denied the affair and denied knowing of the $130,000 payment made by his longtime personal attorney, Michael Cohen, to Daniels in the weeks leading up to the election, initially claiming that he only learned of it from media reports. Trump and Cohen both claimed that Cohen had made the payment without Trump’s knowledge and had not been reimbursed for it, although Trump’s current attorney, Rudy Giuliani, later conceded that Cohen had indeed been reimbursed.

Cohen, who is at the center of Trump’s legal battles and has indicated he could be willing to cooperate with federal investigators looking into the president’s 2016 campaign and allegations of collusion with the Russian government, is also named in Daniels’s and Avenatti’s lawsuits against the president.

Avenatti on Thursday demanded that Cohen and the president immediately come forward with information related to his new clients.

“They should release the information to the American people now,” Avenatti said. “Enough with the games.”