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except the pornstar smear who signed a document saying it never happened. So who is brainwashed again???
CLAIM: A newly released document shows porn actor Stormy Daniels admitting she never had an affair with former President Donald Trump.
AP’S ASSESSMENT: Missing context. The signed statement with the denial was publicly released on Jan. 30, 2018. Not long after, Daniels recanted the statement and said that an affair had occurred. She said her denials were due to a non-disclosure agreement and that she signed the statement because parties involved “made it sound like I had no choice.”
THE FACTS: A grand jury has been weighing whether to indict Trump in a hush money case investigated by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office. The case has homed in on a $130,000 payment made to Daniels ahead of the 2016 election.
Amid those proceedings, Trump allies and others on social media are attempting to cast the old statement denying the affair as new information.
“BREAKING: Signed official statement of Stormy Daniels admits affair never happened and that she was not paid ‘hush money,’” reads a tweet that circulated widely Thursday, sharing the document signed by Daniels.
A Facebook post similarly claimed: “Trump just shared a bombshell letter from Stormy Daniels debunking DA Bragg’s case!!”
But the 2018 statement isn’t new or revelatory.
In the Jan. 30, 2018, signed statement, Daniels denied having an affair with Trump, which reversed earlier statements that an affair had occurred; she also said that she had not been paid “hush money” to sign the denial. Another statement released by Trump’s former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, earlier that month also quoted Daniels as denying the affair.
The Jan. 30, 2018, statement social media users are sharing as new was in fact widely reported at the time, even though Daniels herself immediately began to cast doubt on it.
The same night the statement was released, Daniels did a late-night interview in which she suggested the signature was not hers — even though her representative told The Associated Press she had signed it.
Weeks later, Daniels’ representative said her client would be free to tell her story because they believed a non-disclosure agreement had been invalidated after Cohen publicly confirmed making the $130,000 payment to Daniels.
Daniels subsequently suggested in a March 2018 “60 Minutes” interview with Anderson Cooper that she agreed to the statements in January 2018 because she thought there could be legal repercussions if she did not.
“So you signed and released a statement that said, ‘I am not denying this affair because I was paid in hush money … I’m denying it because it never happened.’ That’s a lie?” Cooper asked.
“Yes,” Daniels responded, going on to say she did so because parties involved “made it sound like I had no choice.”
Daniels’ assertion that she had an affair with Trump predates his 2016 presidential campaign.
As the AP has reported, in a 2011 interview with the gossip magazine In Touch Weekly, Daniels — who the magazine said passed a polygraph exam — said the two had sex on one occasion and she described subsequent in-person meetings, phone calls and discussions about a potential TV appearance. In Touch held off on publishing her account after Cohen threatened to sue the publication; it was published in 2018.
Daniels later filed an unsuccessful defamation lawsuit against Trump after he dismissed her claims of being threatened to keep quiet about the tryst as a “total con job.”
This is part of AP’s effort to address widely shared misinformation, including work with outside companies and organizations to add factual context to misleading content that is circulating online.
