Amid Trump's indictment in the Manhattan court, Trump won a court battle against Daniels. In a case officially unrelated to the Hush Money case, this case was about a Tweet that Trump posted against Daniel's statements.
Trump may have won the battle, but can he win the war?
What Is the Case
In October 2018 Stormy Daniels whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford went on an interview with CBS News magazine.
In this Exclusive interview, Ms. Clifford talked about all the drama surrounding her and Donald Trump.
All the current movements and actions started right from that interview. She announced many critical claims that day but 2 of the main claims were:
The first claim paved the way for the indictment, and the second one didn't reach anywhere.
Ms. Daniels said that she was going to a fitness class with her infant daughter when she was faced with a stranger.
According to her, the guy that approached her told her: "Leave Trump alone. Forget the story." Then he told her after leaning toward her daughter: "That’s a beautiful little girl. It’d be a shame if something happened to her mom."
Until that moment, the accusations were mainly about the affair. This claim made things much more serious since it involved a direct physical threat.
Daniels, later on, spoke about how Trump's team did not stop threatening her, and the other time they threatened her was when Trump's team filed a lawsuit against her claiming $20M in damages and $1M more in case of further violation of the NDA she signed.
Right after this interview, Donald Trump Tweeted that her claims are false and called her encounter with that stranger in the parking lot a "total con job".
This resulted in Daniels suing Trump.
In October 2018, District Judge S. James Otero dismissed the case and said that Trump's statement is protected by the First Amendment.
"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 United States. The First Amendment protects this type of rhetorical statement," Otero said.
Trump's Win over Daniels in Legal Fees
After dismissing the case, Otero ordered Daniels to pay $293 000 in legal fees plus another $245 000 in fees after losing another appeal.
Daniels asked the court that the fees are too much and if possible, knock them down, which was not accepted. The judge said, “Clifford’s argument that the fee request is unreasonable and excessive is not well-founded.”
Then, she was ordered to pay $120 000 to Trump's Attorney. In total, she was ordered to pay around $658 000 in legal fees.
Trump's team congratulated this victory to trump in a tweet and said:
"Congratulations to President Trump on this final attorney fee victory in his favor this morning. Collectively, our firm obtained over $600 000 in attorney fee awards in his favor in the meritless litigation initiated by Stormy Daniels."
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Congratulations to President Trump on this final attorney fee victory in his favor this morning. Collectively, our firm obtained over 0,000 in attorney fee awards in his favor in the meritless litigation initiated by Stormy Daniels. <a href="https://t.co/ld7SVvZOp6">https://t.co/ld7SVvZOp6</a> <a href="https://t.co/1b5P3flxFb">pic.twitter.com/1b5P3flxFb</a></p>— Harmeet K. Dhillon (@pnjaban) <a href="https://twitter.com/pnjaban/status/1643331602511011848?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 4, 2023</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Once again, it seems like Trump has won the battle but the real problem for him and his team is the indictment case. That's the real war. Trump's job isn't easy, and no one said it would be.
This may look like a win for Trump but the public definitely doesn't forget that Daniels announced on live TV that Trump's men threatened her. Even if that scenario was fake, the damage had already been done. And the loss that Trump experienced from that claim will never be fixed by any amount of money.
