Pornographic actress Stormy Daniels must pay nearly $122,000 in attorney fees for Donald Trump as a result of the defamation case she lost against the former US president, an appeals court ruled Tuesday.
A California court’s ruling was released almost at the same time the Republican tycoon became the first former president to be charged with a felony, the Associated Press (AP) reported.
Trump pleaded not guilty in a New York City court on Tuesday to 34 counts of falsifying business records in a plan to quell rumors of extramarital affairs with Daniels and Playboy magazine model Karen McDougal that surfaced during his first White House candidacy.
Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, claims she had an affair with Trump in 2006 and was paid $130,000 days before the 2016 presidential election as part of a nondisclosure agreement.
The pornographic actress sued Trump for defamation after he dismissed her allegations that she threatened to remain silent in a case that was dismissed by a judge in 2018.
On Tuesday, a U.S. appeals court ruled that Trump’s lawyers “reasonably” spent more than 183 hours on the appeals process, but denied a request for an additional $5,150 (about $5,000) in other fees on the grounds that it did not discriminate.
In total, Daniels was ordered to pay more than $600,000 (about $550,000) in fees to Trump’s lawyers, revealed on the social network Harmeet Dillon, one of Trump’s lawyers in the case.
This figure includes about $300,000 (about $275,000) in attorney fees that Daniels previously had to pay.
After a federal appeals court upheld the verdict last year, Daniels said, “I’m going to jail before I pay a dime.”
Source: DN
