One of the many courtroom fights President Trump is bogged down with at the moment includes a 34-count criminal trial in New York over allegations that he not only paid hush money to Stormy Daniels, a porn star who he reportedly had an affair with, but that Trump then falsified his business records to keep that payment hidden before the 2016 president election. A new Peacock documentary out this week, appropriately named Stormy, offers a deep dive into that made-for-tabloids sequence of events — importantly, from the perspective of the titular actress who found herself at the center of one of the most salacious American political scandals in years.
As far as some of the initial reaction to Stormy goes, it should also perhaps come as no surprise that lawyers for the former president very much don’t want you to stream the Peacock film. In fact, they’ve gone so far as to file objections to its release, arguing that it will bias jurors in Trump’s criminal case.
Here’s just a taste of why Trump’s army of lawyers are fuming: Stormy only just hit Peacock yesterday, but already a slew of jaw-dropping details from the movie have garnered headlines — such as actress conceding that, yes, she willingly signed an NDA agreeing in exchange for the hush money payment simply as a means of establishing a paper trail linking her name with Trump’s. Why? Partly so that “he could not have me killed.”
“I am here today to tell my story — and even if I just change a few people’s minds, it’s fine,” she says at one point in Stormy. “If not, at least my daughter can look back on this and know the truth.” She goes on to explain how Trump would call her at least once a week after their sexual encounter and “profess his love, beg to see me again.” In another eyebrow-raising revelation, she adds that Trump told her she reminded him of his daughter Ivanka.
To the point about the documentary spurring Trump’s lawyers to object to its release, Stormy arrives just as the case against the former president is ramping up. On Monday of this week, a judge rejected Trump’s effort to block the actress from testifying against him. A trial date in the case will be set on March 25.
“I won’t give up because I’m telling the truth,” Daniels says in the documentary. “And I kind of don’t even know if it matters anymore.”