The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ordered adult film star Stormy Daniels to pay former US President Donald Trump $121,000 in legal fees for a defamation case. This decision was made on the same day that Trump was indicted in a hush money payment case. Daniels had sued Trump for defamation after he tweeted about her and shared a photo of her ex-husband next to a sketch of a man she claimed threatened her and her daughter. She alleged that after an interview with In Touch Magazine in 2011, an unnamed man approached her and threatened her, saying “Leave Trump alone. Forget the story… That’s a beautiful little girl. It’d be a shame if something happened to her mom.” Trump denied the allegations and accused Daniels of lying. The judge dismissed the case in 2018 and asked Daniels to pay Trump’s legal fees, which she later argued were too high. The court found her request “unreasonable” and ruled that the fees demanded by Trump were “reasonable”. This ruling came hours after Trump appeared in court in a separate criminal case brought by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, where he is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree. The case claims that Trump falsified business records when he reimbursed his former lawyer and “fixer” Michael Cohen for payments made to Daniels during the 2016 campaign. New York classifies falsifying business records as a misdemeanour, but the charges can be upgraded to a low-level felony if prosecutors can show that the defendant committed the offence intending to commit or conceal another crime. In this case, the former president was charged with felonies on the grounds that the conduct was intended to aid another crime, which was violating election laws.
