Trump hits Stormy Daniels with over $300,000 in legal fees as NDA lawsuit continues

Michael Avenatti warns US president will owe his client more money as part of separate lawsuit

Donald Trump has demanded Stormy Daniels pay his costly legal fees after the porn star unsuccessfully tried to sue the president for defamation.

He’s priced his legal fees for the lawsuit, dismissed earlier this month by US district judge James Otero, at $341,559.50 (£267,953.43).

The lawsuit stems from a tweet Mr Trump wrote shortly after Ms Daniels — whose real name is Stephanie Clifford — and her lawyer, Michael Avenatti, made guest appearances on The View, revealing a forensic sketch of the man she claims threatened her to stay silent about her alleged affair with the president.

He described the sketch as a “con job” and later went on to attack Ms Daniels in follow up tweets, recently calling her a “horseface”. The judge has not yet ruled whether Ms Daniels must pay the legal fees.

However, Mr Avenatti said the price tag for legal services estimated by Mr Trump are “created out of whole cloth” in a statement to Washington Examiner, adding that “it is nothing compared to what he will owe my client from the main NDA case”.

In court filings on Monday, the president argued Ms Daniels “filed this action, not because it had any merit, but instead for the ulterior purposes of raising her media profile, engaging in political attacks against the president by herself and her attorney, who has appeared on more than 150 national television news interviews attacking the president and now is exploring a run for the presidency himself in 2020”.

Mr Trump has repeatedly denied having an affair with Ms Daniels.

The two have been battling in the courts over separate lawsuits throughout the year; one focusing on a nondisclosure agreement created just before the 2016 election, as well as the previous defamation lawsuit.

In his ruling, Judge Otero said: “The court agrees with Mr Trump’s argument because the tweet in question constitutes ‘rhetorical hyperbole’ normally associated with politics and public discourse in the US.”

Meanwhile, the lawsuit stemming from the NDA Ms Daniels signed remains an issue that could boil over for Mr Trump and his former associates, including his longtime ex-lawyer Michael Cohen, who admitted in a plea deal that he facilitated the agreement “in coordinate and at the direction of a candidate for federal office”.

Ms Daniels, who was paid $130,000 (£102,012) as part of the agreement, has said it should be nullified as it was never signed by Mr Trump.