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).
President Trump has already spurned key allies at the annual summit, accusing Germany of being a "captive of Russia." Cheddar's J.D. Durkin, who is on the ground in Brussels, gets into the latest.
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President Donald Trump nominated the DC appellate court judge to replace Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, who's retiring at the end of the month.
A study finds male political reporters in Washington, D.C., retweet other men more than women. “Men and women are operating in gender echo chambers in Washington on Twitter,” says Nikki Usher, the lead author of the study.
Members of the military alliance are prepared to be spurned by the president and worry he may start to unravel the organization. But the Trump administration has, in fact, increased its spending on NATO, suggesting that worries surrounding the event might not turn transpire, says Dan Michaels, the Wall Street Journal Brussels bureau chief.
American cheese producers that rely heavily on exports are already feeling the impact of tariffs on their products, forcing them to reconsider their strategy completely, says Heather Hadden, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal.
Although the recent job report showed the U.S. economy added 213,000 jobs in June, the trade war is predicted to have a significant impact on the economy. "Unless we get either isolated resolutions of these disputes or global resolutions ... we don't see any momentum in that space," Mark Hamrick, senior economic analyst at Bankrate.com, tells Cheddar.
President Trump is expected to submit his Supreme Court nominee to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy on Monday.
The three favorites are almost "identical" in policy stances, says Rick Hasen, professor of law and political science at UC-Irvine.
The U.S. tariffs on Chinese products that kicked in on Friday are specifically targeted at high-tech goods, an attempt to crack down on alleged intellectual property theft. But they could end up raising the cost of products like e-cigarettes, e-bikes, and smart home devices that are overwhelmingly used by millennials, says Axios reporter Erica Pandey.
U.S. tariffs on $34 billion worth of Chinese goods kicked in early Friday, prompting China to respond in kind and escalating tensions between the two countries into what Beijing describes as "the biggest trade war in economic history."
