(USA Today) - In Touch magazine has published a 7-year-old interview with a former porn star in which she goes into salacious details about an alleged extramarital affair with Donald Trump that only last week she claimed never took place.
Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, told the magazine in 2011 that the alleged sexual trysts with Trump began in July 2006 after she met him at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe, Nev. The meeting and alleged affair came a year after the future president had married Melania Trump, his third wife.
“I actually don’t even remember why I did it but I do remember while we were having sex, I was like, ‘Please don’t try to pay me,’” Daniels said in the 2011 interview that the magazine only recently resurrected. “And then I remember thinking, ‘But I bet if he did, it would be a lot.'”
In the In Touch article, Daniels purportedly told the magazine that she and Trump had several more encounters over the next few years.
“Whether you’re a fan of his or not, which I never really was, you gotta admit he’s pretty fascinating,” she said in the interview published Wednesday. “We had really good banter. He told me once that I was someone to be reckoned with, beautiful and smart just like his daughter.”
The article, headlined Donald Trump Cheated on Melania With Me, is the latest twist in the Stormy Daniel saga that has gone through various permutations. Last week, she denied reports of an affair after The Wall Street Journal reported that the former adult film star was allegedly paid $130,000 through Trump's lawyer to keep silent.
The Journal alleged that Michael Cohen, a longtime lawyer for Trump, arranged the $130,000 payment a month before the 2016 election. The article, quoting "people familiar with the matter," alleged that the payment was part of an agreement that precluded her from discussing the alleged affair with Trump publicly.
The newspaper said Cohen and the White House denied the allegations of any agreement aimed at keeping her silent. Cohen also released a statement from Daniels denying any “sexual and/or romantic affair” with Trump or the receipt of any “hush money” from Trump.
But In Touch was not the only media contact Daniels made. Jacob Weisberg, editor in chief of the Slate Group, wrote in Slate this week that Daniels likewise related to him details of her alleged affair in a series of phone conversations and text messages between August and October 2016, in which she was allegedly prepared to go public with her allegations.
Weisberg said Daniels was also discussing going public on ABC's Good Morning America around the same time, but went silent about a week before the election, refusing to respond to Weisberg's messages. This was around the same time as the alleged payment to the actress.
In a related story, Alana Evans, also an adult film actress and friend of Daniels, told Megyn Kelly of NBC's Today this week that Trump invited her to join him and Daniels for a “party” in his Lake Tahoe hotel room. She said she turned down the invitation but had an idea of what kind of "party" the pair allegedly had in mind.
“If you’re inviting me to a hotel room to hang out with another man and a girlfriend of mine, it’s very easy for you to believe that there’s going to be more going on than just playing cards or Scrabble,” Evans said.
She added that Daniels told her the next morning how the evening had unfolded.
“She says, ‘Well picture this, Donald Trump chasing me around the bedroom in his tighty whities,” Evans told Kelly, “isn’t something that you forget.”
