The attorney for Stormy Daniels threatened to sue Donald Trump after tweeted Wednesday that her sketch of a man alleged to have threatened her ‘a con job’ and suggested it looked like her husband.
Michael Avenatti told CNN that he was looking at the porn star’s existing lawsuit against Trump to add a defamation claim.
‘We’re likely going to be amending our complaint,’ he told Wolf Blitzer. ‘We’re looking at doing that now, to add a defamation claim directly against the president.
‘There’s going to be consequences that flow from that if we decide to do it.’
Daniels is currently involved in a lawsuit in California over the $135,000 she was paid by Michael Cohen, Trump’s personal attorney, before the election to stop her airing her claims of sex with the then presidential candidate in 2006.
See you in court: Michael Avenatti said he was considering adding a defamation complaint to his existing lawsuit on behalf of Stomry Daniels against Donald Trump
The president tweeted that a sketch of a man Daniels says threatened her in 2011 to keep quiet about claims of a Trump affair is a ‘total con job’
On the left is the sketch Daniels and her attorney Michael Avenatti released Tuesday on ‘The View.’ On the right is Daniels with husband Glendon Crain
On Tuesday she used an appearance on the view to show the sketch of a man she says threatened her in 2011 to stay silent for trying to sell her story then.
Trump broke his silence Wednesday about Daniels, mocking the courtroom artist’s sketch and saying: ‘A sketch years later about a nonexistent man. A total con job, playing the Fake News Media for Fools (but they know it)!’
The president retweeted a side-by-side comparison of the pencil sketch with a photo of Daniels’ husband Glendon Crain, a fellow adult film star who had the porn name Brendon Miller, and a former heavy metal drummer.
The two images bear a striking similarity. That led to rampant online speculation on Tuesday that Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, filled in details from her own memory of the man who has been her partner since 2010.
‘Welcome to the playing field,’ her showman lawyer, Michael Avenatti, tweeted in response to Trump.
Avenatti claimed ‘FBI search warrants [are] uncovering EXISTING documents and recordings showing con job after con job pulled on REAL people and very REAL American citizens (who didn’t know it).’
That was a reference to longtime Trump attorney Michael Cohen, who has tangled with Avenatti in recent weeks. The FBI raided his home and offices nine days ago.
And in a second dig at the president, Avenatti wrote that ‘[i]n my experience, there is nothing better in litigation than having a completely unhinged, undisciplined opponent who is prone to shooting himself in the foot. Always leads to BIGLY problems…like new claims (i.e. defamation). LOL.’
Daniels has claimed that in 2011 the man in her sketch, which was released Tuesday, threatened her in a Las Vegas parking lot to keep quiet about bedding the future commander-in-chief.
Daniels’s attorney Michael Avenatti (right) offered a $100,000 reward on Tuesday for the identity of the mystery man in the sketch, and increased it hours later to $131,000
Avenatti blasted Trump as ‘unhinged’ on Wednesday and said his Twitter outbursts would help Daniels’ case
Avenatti also suggested the real ‘con job’ is Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, whose offices were the subject of an FBI raid last week
‘A guy walked up on me and said to me: “Leave Trump alone. Forget the story”,’ she said last month in a ’60 Minutes’ interview.
‘Then he leaned around and looked at my daughter and said, “That’s a beautiful little girl. It’d be a shame if something happened to her mom.” And then he was gone.’
Trump hadn’t spoken publicly about Daniels until Wednesday morning. White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders has told reporters, however, that he denies ever having sexual contact with her.
The sketch generated significant head-scratching on Tuesday, with some online wags saying it resembled New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, and others seeing the image of actor Willem Dafoe.
Still others said it looked like roacker Jon Bon Jovi, ‘Dexter’ actor Michael C. Hall, disgraced ‘Access Hollywood’ anchor Billy Bush, or former Sugar Ray frontman Mark McGrath.
Many on social media compared the sketch on Tuesday to NFL quarterback Tom Brady (left) or actor Willem Dafoe (right)
Avenatti on Tuesday promised a $100,000 reward during an appearance on ‘The View,’ saying it would be paid to anyone who could establish the identity of the man in the sketch.
‘We want to get to the bottom of who this is, and we think we know who this is, but we want to confirm it,’ he said.
On Tuesday night he increased the amount to $131,000 – slightly more than the $130,000 Daniels accepted in 2016 for her silence, in a deal she is trying to have invalidated in court.