Stormy Daniels ‘refused to take a subpoena’ from Trump lawyers summoning her to testify in hush money trial
In a court filing, Donald Trump’s attorneys say a process server approached Stormy Daniels as she arrived at the 3 Dollar Bill nightclub in Brooklyn for a screening of her new documentary Stormy
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Your support makes all the difference.Donald Trump’s attorneys have claimed that they tried to serve adult film star Stormy Daniels with a subpoena to testify in the former president’s hush money trial – but she refused to take it.
In a court filing, filed on Monday by Mr Trump’s legal team and obtained by The Associated Press, his attorneys said that a process server had approached Ms Daniels as she arrived at the 3 Dollar Bill nightclub in Brooklyn on the night of her screening of her new documentary Stormy in March.
According to the documents, Ms Daniels refused to take the papers and the process server Dominic DellaPorte was forced to “leave them at her feet”.
“I stated she was served as I identified her and explained to her what the documents were,” the process server wrote.
“She did not acknowledge me and kept walking inside the venue, and she had no expression on her face.”
The subpoena reportedly relates to Ms Daniels’ documentary and asks for communications between her and two potential hush money witnesses: Mr Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen and Playboy model Karen McDougal, who – like Ms Daniels – also allegedly had an affair with the former president.
It also asked for communications between the adult film star and E Jean Carroll, the former Elle magazine columnist who Mr Trump was found liable for sexually abusing and defaming in a 2023 civil trial.
Ms Daniels’ lawyer Clark Brewster labelled the request an “unwarranted fishing expedition” and said it didn’t bear relevance to the hush money case, according to a letter to the judge obtained by The Associated Press. Mr Brewster added that the request “appears calculated to cause harassment and/or intimidation of a lay witness”.
Meanwhile, Mr Trump’s attorneys have claimed that Ms Daniels’ documentary was “plainly seeking to promote her brand and make money based on her status as a witness”.
Mr Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records related to payments given to Ms Daniels in exchange for her silence about their alleged 2006 affair ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
In her documentary, Ms Daniels recalls feeling “f***ing terrified” in the lead-up to 2016 election and so was actually “very relieved” at the prospect of keeping the affair quiet.
She also says she felt safer in the fact that there would be a “paper trail and money trail linking me to Donald Trump so that he could not have me killed”.
Ms Daniels has described her sexual encounter with Mr Trump as consensual, but she says in Stormy that she didn’t want to go through with it.
“To this day, I blame myself and I have not forgiven myself because I didn’t shut his a** down in that moment, so maybe make him pause before he tried it with someone else,” she says.
“The hardest part about all of this is I feel like I am partially responsible for every woman that could have come after me.”
Ms Daniels’ streamed the documentary at the Brooklyn bar at the end of March, just days before the original start date of the hush money trial.
Jury selection is still under way in the landmark trial – which marks the first time in American history that a former or sitting president is on trial on criminal charges.