Stormy Daniels: I was told by unknown man to forget the story

Stormy Daniels, the adult film star who has claimed to have had an extramarital affair with President Donald Trump in 2006, told “60 Minutes” that she was threatened by an unknown man who told her to “forget the story” of their relationship.

A man approached Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, in a Las Vegas parking lot in 2011, she said, after she agreed to an interview with a sister publication of In Touch magazine for $15,000.

“ ‘Leave Trump alone. Forget the story,’ ” Daniels recounted to journalist Anderson Cooper in an interview aired Sunday. “And then he leaned around and looked at my daughter and said, ‘That’s a beautiful little girl. It’d be a shame if something happened to her mom.’ And then he was gone.”

Daniels alleges that she and Trump had sex once in a Lake Tahoe, Nevada, hotel room while he was married to his third wife, Melania, shortly after she had given birth, and that they continued a platonic relationship. Daniels has also previously denied through a lawyer that they ever had an affair, as has Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen.

Daniels said the Las Vegas encounter left her concerned for her safety and that of her then-infant daughter.

Daniels has said she can speak freely now because Trump never personally signed their nondisclosure agreement and that Cohen invalidated it when he spoke to news outlets about the $130,000 payment for her silence. Daniels signed the agreement 11 days before the 2016 election.

“This is about the cover-up,” Daniels’ lawyer, Michael Avenatti, said according to a “60 Minutes” transcript. “This is about the extent that Mr. Cohen and the president have gone to intimidate this woman, to silence her, to threaten her and to put her under their thumb. It is thuggish behavior from people in power. And it has no place in American democracy.”

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The $130,000 payment has since become the focus of campaign finance complaints to the Federal Election Commission.

Daniels said, according to the transcript, that she signed the nondisclosure agreement and other more recent statements in exchange for the “hush money” because she felt “intimidated” and “bullied.”

The White House and the Trump Organization did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Sunday night.

In an interview with Vanity Fair last week, when asked if he or anyone connected to Trump had threatened Daniels, Cohen said: “I can only speak for myself. I reiterate: I have never threatened her in any way and I am unaware of anyone else doing so.”

Daniels, now 39, from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, met Trump in July 2006 at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe when she was 27 and he was 60, she said to Cooper. Trump asked her to dinner, then met her in his hotel suite, where they had consensual sex.

Cooper asked Daniels, if Trump watched the interview Sunday, “what would you say to him?”

“He knows I’m telling the truth,” she responded.

The interview aired shortly after former Playboy model Karen McDougal also accused Trump of an extramarital affair and filed a lawsuit to get out of a confidentiality agreement.

After stories appeared about Daniels’ relationship with Trump, Daniels signed a statement in January denying there was an affair.

Trump’s attorney, Charles Harder, submitted that statement to “60 Minutes.” It read in part: “My involvement with Donald Trump was limited to a few public appearances and nothing more.”

Daniels said she “didn’t know what to do. And so I signed it,” she told Cooper. “Even though I had repeatedly expressed that I wouldn’t break the agreement, but I was not comfortable lying.”

Cooper asked Daniels, “How do we know you’re telling the truth?”

She responded: “[Because] I have no reason to lie. I’m opening myself up for, you know, possible danger and definitely a whole lot of [expletive].”

With Laura Figueroa Hernandez, AP and The Washington Post.