Sunday’s “60 Minutes” featuring an interview with adult film star Stormy Daniels was the most-watched episode of the show in a decade, bringing in more than 21 million views.
But the biggest takeaway for former prosecutor Jonna Spilbor was that Daniels poses no real legal threat to the president.
“There’s nothing that Donald Trump has done that’s been illegal in terms of his dealings with her...This is really [just] an embarrassment, and it’s a way for Stormy Daniels to profit off a consensual encounter,” said Spilbor.
Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Cliffords, claims she had a consensual affair with the president back in 2006.
In the interview, she said she was threatened into silence in 2011 after she initially sold her story to Bauer Publishing.
“[She] cannot back up any of her claims,” said Spilbor. “If she was truly threatened, she should have gone to the police.”
She also provided the salacious details of their time together, including spanking Trump with a Forbes magazine.
During the 2016 presidential election Michael Cohen, Trump’s lawyer at the time, paid Daniels $130,000 in hush money and made her sign a non-disclosure agreement.
She’s now suing to invalidate the NDA, since Trump himself never signed on the dotted line.
Daniels interview aired days after CNN correspondent Anderson Cooper caught up with Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model, who also claims to have had an affair with Trump more than a decade ago.
For the full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/why-former-prosecutor-jonna-spilbor-says-stormy-daniels-doesnt-have-a-case-against-president-trump).
Emily Hoeven, newsletter editor at CalMatters, joins Cheddar News to discuss California Governor Gavin Newsom's gun law modeled after Texas's abortion law.
Chuck Rocha, host of 'Nuestro' podcast and opinion contributor at The New York Times, joins Cheddar News to discuss why Democrats are losing Hispanic voters.
More businesses are requiring workers to return to the office, but there is concern that many employees in the middle class, especially women and people of color, need remote work options for reasons including childcare and financial security. Joan Williams, director of the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California, joined Cheddar to discuss why office mandates could be detrimental to the middle class. She noted that while companies claim a return to offices would help foster more collaboration and efficiency, reports show that they are successfully able to do their jobs from home.
The U.S. postal service has confirmed that it secretly developed and tested a blockchain-based mobile voting system ahead of the 2020 election. Susan Greenhalgh, senior advisor on election security, Free Speech for People, joins Cheddar News to discuss the cybersecurity complications of a mobile voting system.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled to allow the controversial Texas abortion law to remain in effect, banning abortion at six weeks and allowing any private citizen to sue a person or doctor aiding or abetting someone seeking an abortion. Outraged at this decision, California Governor Gavin Newsom is working to draft a proposal in line with the law as it relates to guns. Shawn Hubler, California correspondent at the New York Times, joins Cheddar News to discuss.
Even as tech giant Google implements a vaccination mandate, charging its employees to declare their vaccine status within a time frame or risk dismissal, the federal government is tangled up in the court system trying to impose one of its own. Cindy Cohn, the executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Harry Nelson, founder and managing partner of Nelson Hardiman LLP, joined Cheddar to debate the ethics, efficacy, and legality surrounding the issue. While Cohn noted that she thinks the federal mandate might be legally sound, her organization is also concerned with a separate question of privacy. "At EFF what we're most interested in is the digital surveillance that's going along with some of these attempts to try to track and confirm whether people are vaccinated or not," she said.