Fact check: Trump's Manhattan indictment unrelated to order for Stormy Daniels to pay legal fees

Sudiksha Kochi, USA TODAY
Updated ·4 min read
8

The claim: Order for Stormy Daniels to pay Trump legal fees shows indictment is 'absurd and fake'

An April 8 Facebook post (direct link, archived link) shows a link to an article from The Political Insider with the headline "Stormy Daniels Ordered To Pay Donald Trump Additional 120K+ By 9th Circuit Court."

The post's caption says, "This makes the New York case even more absurd and fake."

Similar posts have generated hundreds of shares on Facebook.

Follow us on Facebook! Like our page to get updates throughout the day on our latest debunks

Our rating: False

The court order is related to a 2018 defamation case adult film actress Stormy Daniels filed against former President Donald Trump. The case is unrelated to Trump's Manhattan indictment, numerous legal experts said.

No connection between court order and Trump indictment

Trump was placed under arrest on April 4 for allegedly falsifying business records in connection with hush money payments made to Daniels during his 2016 presidential campaign.

That same day, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered Daniels to pay $121,972 in legal fees to Trump.

But contrary to the post's claim, the court order does not show that Trump’s Manhattan indictment is "absurd and fake," according to legal experts.

The order is related to a 2018 defamation lawsuit Daniels filed against Trump after he called Daniels’ allegation that she was threatened to keep quiet about a sexual encounter with him a “con job” in a tweet, as USA TODAY reported.

A judge dismissed the case, labeling Trump’s tweet as “rhetorical hyperbole” and noting that it was protected by the First Amendment. Daniels was ordered to pay Trump nearly $300,000 in legal fees and an additional $245,000 after losing an appeal, CNN reported.

The April 4 court order came after Trump had requested $121,972 in fees for defending against another appeal. Daniels argued the fee request was excessive and unreasonable. The court said her arguments were not well-founded and ruled in Trump's favor.

Trump indictment fact checks: What's true and false among claims, images from hush money probe

But the 2018 case and the latest court order have no bearing on Trump’s indictment, according to Marc Scholl, who served as a criminal prosecutor in New York.

"Whether Trump is guilty of falsifying business records, etc. has nothing to do with whether the phrase 'total con job' constituted defamation or even whether Daniels was threatened," Scholl said.

The court did not find that Trump hadn’t engaged in a relationship with her or that hush money payments weren’t made in the 2018 case, according to Michael Bachner, former Manhattan assistant district attorney.

“It had nothing to do with any of that,” Bachner said. “It was purely that what Trump said about some remarks that she made being a con job were protected by the First Amendment. She then appealed that decision to the Court of Appeals in the Ninth Circuit, and the Court of Appeals affirmed the lower court's decision dismissing the action and then assessed additional legal fees against her.”

Former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti also said that "nothing about the 2018 defamation case would be a defense to the charge of falsifying business records with the intent to commit other crimes."

USA TODAY reached out to the social media users who shared the claim for comment.

PolitiFact also debunked the claim.

Our fact-check sources:

Thank you for supporting our journalism. You can subscribe to our print edition, ad-free app or electronic newspaper replica here.

Our fact-check work is supported in part by a grant from Facebook.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fact check: 2018 Stormy Daniels case not related to Trump indictment

  • Up next
  • Up next
  • Up next
  • Up next
  • Up next
  • Up next
  • Up next