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'Tiny' Vs. 'Horseface': Trump Slings Mud With Stormy Daniels After Courtroom Win

President Trump directed then-attorney Michael Cohen to buy the silence of adult film actress Stormy Daniels ahead of Election Day in 2016. On Monday, a judge threw out Daniels' defamation lawsuit against Trump.
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President Trump directed then-attorney Michael Cohen to buy the silence of adult film actress Stormy Daniels ahead of Election Day in 2016. On Monday, a judge threw out Daniels' defamation lawsuit against Trump.

President Trump launched a war of name-calling on Tuesday with adult film actress Stormy Daniels and her attorney as he exulted after a judge threw out Daniels' defamation lawsuit against the president.

Trump said on Twitter that he welcomed the opportunity to take the offense against Daniels — whom he called "Horseface" — and lawyer Michael Avenatti in Texas, where Daniels lives.

Avenatti, who represents Daniels but who also has become an all-purpose antagonist against Trump, fired back by recalling Daniels' account of an alleged sexual encounter with Trump in 2006 at a time he was married to the now-first lady, Melania Trump, and not long after the birth of their son.

Avenatti suggested he would welcome some kind of suit by the president.

Trump has acknowledged making a payment to Daniels not long before Election Day in 2016 to keep her from talking publicly, but he has denied her underlying allegation of having a sexual encounter in 2006.

Trump's onetime attorney, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty in a federal case this year to violating election law by arranging the payment to Daniels and another one in 2016. Trump was described in court documents as directing Cohen's actions in the matter.

For Daniels, however, the account of her encounter with Trump is long past the point of dispute. She has talked publicly and written a book about her contacts with Trump.

Among the things she has discussed are her knowledge about intimate details of the now-president, to which she alluded again on Tuesday.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Philip Ewing is an election security editor with NPR's Washington Desk. He helps oversee coverage of election security, voting, disinformation, active measures and other issues. Ewing joined the Washington Desk from his previous role as NPR's national security editor, in which he helped direct coverage of the military, intelligence community, counterterrorism, veterans and more. He came to NPR in 2015 from Politico, where he was a Pentagon correspondent and defense editor. Previously, he served as managing editor of Military.com, and before that he covered the U.S. Navy for the Military Times newspapers.