Stormy Daniels news – Michael Avenatti begins cross-examination of porn star in his own fraud trial

With the third payment four months late and the fourth payment due in February 2019, Ms Daniels testifies that Mr Avenatti said the publisher was offering to pay both but as a smaller amount.

He asked whether she would be open to that and she refused, saying: “Hell, no.”

Ms Daniels told Avenatti that she was going to do an interview in which she would say that authors should not do business with MacMillan. She also told him that reporters were asking why his office was seized.

He claimed it was his old firm and not the one working on her case. He wanted her to tell the press it was a big “nothing-burger”.

Ms Daniels sent a message to the publisher’s rep on 13 February 2019: “This is Stormy Daniels. I am very confused why I have not been paid per my contract with your company. I’ve been lied to repeatedly about this and want to hear directly from you when I will be receiving my check.”

On Valentine’s Day of 2019, Stormy Daniels texted Mr Avenatti: “Now. Find my f***ing money.”

“Word!!!!!” he replied.

Ms Daniels says she took that number of exclamation points to mean: “Affirmative. Very affirmative.”

Communication then stopped between the pair. Ms Daniels testified she learned from the publisher that Mr Avenatti was lying and that he had a trust account with her name on it.

“He had lied to me every day for five months,” she said.

Ms Daniels wrote to him on 19 February: “I didn’t even know you had a trust account with my name on it.”

She says Mr Avenatti responded: “Let me find out if we even received this payment.”

Asked where he wrote that he had received and spent this payment, Ms Daniels replies: “Nowhere.”

Ms Daniels says that she eventually received proof of the banking transfers to Mr Avenatti from the literary agent and sent the screenshots to him.

Adam Klasfeld reports Ms Daniels described it as a “mic drop” moment.

She says she wanted to send the message: “I’m tired of your lies. Just stop. Come clean.”

According to prosecutors this is how the payments from the publishers were broken down.

Prosecutors ask Ms Daniels what reaction she had upon learning that her payment had in fact been sent early?

“I don’t know if there’s a word stronger than furious, but that would be it.”

She is asked if before she found out he was lying to her, she was responsive to the defendant?

Ms Daniels says they spoke almost daily and then he wrote her a letter saying that he had to decided to terminate representing her.

She says that she was never paid the third installment for her book.

Ms Daniels is asked about comments she made that she hoped Mr Avenatti would be “raped in prison”. She confirms she said those words but says she did not actually want that to happen to him.

Asked why she said it she replies: “I felt violated.”

Mr Avenatti begins his cross-examination of Ms Daniels.

He asked if she has a single message that says he would not take any money from your book deal. She replies that she does not.

Mr Avenatti then asked how he was supposed to get paid for all of the work that he and his law firm did for her over the course of a year?

She replies that his payment was to come from the legal defence fund and winnings against Donald Trump.

He also asks if he ever told her he would work for her for one dollar. She says that no he did not.

Mr Avenatti asks if everything in her book is 100 per cent true to which she answers yes. He asks whether her statements on Twitter are also to which she also replies yes.

“You have claimed that you have a perfect memory, haven’t you — and that you can see and speak to dead people, haven’t you?” he says.

Ms Daniels answers affirmatively before Mr Avenatti asks if she speaks to a haunted doll.

She answers yes and that the doll speaks to everyone and has her own Instagram account.

Judge Furman strikes the reference to the Instagram account.