Adult film actress Stormy Daniels feared for her safety in October 2016 when she signed a strict non-disclosure agreement with President Donald Trump‘s lawyer, Daniels told CBS’s “60 Minutes” in an interview that was set to air Sunday.
Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, said her fear stemmed from an exchange she had in 2011, when she was confronted in a parking lot in Las Vegas by a man who told her not to discuss her alleged 2006 sexual encounter with Trump.
“Leave Trump alone. Forget the story,” Daniels said the man told her, before turning to focus on Daniels’ infant daughter in the back seat. According to Daniels, the man said to her, “That’s a beautiful little girl. It’d be a shame if something happened to her mom.”
That exchange was still on Daniels’ mind five years later, in 2016, when Trump became the unlikely Republican nominee for president. Through spokespeople, Trump denies that he had an affair with Daniels.
“Suddenly people are reaching out to me again, offering me money. Large amounts of money” to tell her story, Daniels told “60 Minutes” correspondent Anderson Cooper.
“Was I tempted? Yes – I struggle with it. And then I get the call,” she said. Trump’s attorney, Michael Cohen, was offering to pay Daniels $130,000 to sign a strict, broad non-disclosure agreement with Trump, according to her.
Read more: Why special counsel Robert Mueller could care about the Stormy Daniels saga
“The story [of the alleged affair] was coming out again. I was concerned for my family and their safety,” Daniels told Cooper. “I didn’t even negotiate, I just quickly said yes to this very, you know, strict contract. And what most people will agree with me extremely low number.”
Daniels’ heavily promoted “60 Minutes” interview is unlikely to alter the course of the scandal already brewing over whether the contract with Daniels, signed just 11 days before the presidential election, constituted an illegal campaign donation to the Trump campaign. Daniels also revealed many of the details contained in the CBS interview in a 2011 interview Daniels gave In Touch magazine, which was only published in February this year.
But it did bring Daniels’ side of the story into millions of American living rooms on a Sunday night, elevating her already considerable fame and adding to the headaches currently facing the Trump White House.
Representatives for Cohen and the White House did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment on the “60 Minutes” report.
Daniels has said she and Trump were only intimate once, in 2006, and she was never sexually attracted to the real estate magnate, who is more than 30 years her senior. At the time of the alleged encounter, Trump’s wife Melania Trump was at home with the couple’s newborn son, Barron Trump, now 12 years old.
So far, Trump himself has stayed mum on the allegations, but it’s unclear how long the famously outspoken and pugilistic president can remain silent as Daniels and her account of their relationship dominate day after day of news coverage.
Near the end of the interview, Cooper asked Daniels what she would say to the president, if he were watching.
“He knows I’m telling the truth,” she said.
