Full Disclosure
Stormy Daniels with Kevin Carr O’Leary
St. Martin’s Press,
175 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10010.
Copyright © 2018 by Stephanie Clifford
Coincidence. Kismet. Karma. The Universe. Here we go again: A night of bad sex—much like Bill Clinton’s Oval Office unbecoming lust—could bring down a presidency. But this time it’s a porn star/adult films director and not an intern.
If you think we’ve been there, done this, well, you’ve confused the two-dimensional Stormy Daniels, recipient of nasty tweets from Trump and his Trumpsters, with the real deal. Her breasts may be enhanced, but her writing is real, unadorned and down-to-earth. Above all, as she did with the lie detector test she was asked to take, she is willing to ask herself and honestly answer some very difficult questions.
In ordinary times, almost no one would give a hoot about who Stormy Daniels hooked up with in Vegas. But the Universe sent her the Donald and the rest, as they say, is herstory.
“Full Disclosure” reveals a woman who defies any attempt to limit her, to circumscribe or deny her intelligence and courage by pigeon-holing her as a mere porn star. Attorney Michael Avenatti introduces us to Stormy Daniels with words of praise: “What makes Stormy Daniels so unique — and so prepared for the important role she has undertaken — is that she always owns who she is. She is entirely confident in her own skin — every day … My hope for this book is that it will let you learn who Stormy Daniels really is …”
And, of course, let me offer the requisite warning: Stormy Daniels curses like a bandit and talks about sex without embarrassment. If that makes you uncomfortable, please stop reading.
For me, one of the most compelling and completely unexpected matchups we are witnessing these days is Stormy vs. the Donald. And so how appropriate would it be if their dalliance, his lies about it, and his clumsy attempts to mock and minimize and silence her bring down a president who boasted of his ability to sexually assault at will?
We hear Donald’s side of every story almost hourly on Twitter and FOX TV. And though I often found myself a bit uncomfortable with her candor, I appreciated the opportunity to read Stormy’s story. It turned out to be far more of an emotional challenge than I imagined, for Stormy’s story is often heartbreaking.
Beyond the names of her breasts, Thunder and Lightning, we learn of her early great fear of public speaking: “At Scotlandville Magnet High School in my hometown of Baton Rouge, sure, I got straight A’s, but I always took a zero rather than talk in front of the class. My fear was so crippling, my voice so shaky, that I could not get out of my seat.” It is both sad and ironic that the circumstances that led her to find her voice has endangered the life she had made: “I didn’t want people looking at me. Judging me. Which is exactly what has happened ever since March, when I gave 60 Minutes a free interview … about Donald Trump’s personal attorney repeatedly trying to get me to lie about a sexual encounter I had with the president in 2006 … But it wasn’t the full story — it didn’t cover the ‘why’ of my decisions and the real, personal costs to me. I was starring in films I wrote and directed in L.A., then going home to my suburban life with my husband and seven-year-old daughter in Texas. It’s the life I dreamed of and worked hard to have, and I have to keep reminding myself that that life is over. For all I’ve lost, I deserve the chance to defend myself and state all the facts. That’s why I chose to share what you are about to read.”
Stormy quite rightly reminds us of the bigger picture: “My life is a lot more interesting than an encounter with Donald Trump. But I get it. Still, of all the people who I had sex with, why couldn’t the world obsess over one of the hot ones?”
So let’s jump ahead to Stormy and the Trumpster and their nights together. It’s July 13, 2006, in Las Vegas and Stormy, working for Wicked, the adult film production company, tells us: “Our job for the day was simple: Celebrities would come through, and we’d say hello and offer them water or a snack. They could take a photo if they wanted … Back then, Trump was just a charismatic businessman and ‘Apprentice’ reality star. … ‘I’m Donald Trump… Thank you for coming today.’ Steve introduced himself as the owner of Wicked. ‘These are my girls,’ he said, introducing Jessica and the brunette as contract stars. ‘And this is Stormy Daniels, contract star and contract director.’
“‘You direct? That’s very interesting.’ I noticed he was looking at my face and not my breasts … [Later] Trump came through with a bodyguard and once again, Jessica was all over him. I hung back, but he zeroed in on me. ‘Ohh, it’s the director,’ he said … We took a photo, and I know everyone has made a big deal of that picture, but I have that same one with twenty other celebrities that day …
“And then his bodyguard came back … ‘Mr. Trump wants to know if you can have dinner with him tonight,’ he said … ‘My name is Keith Schiller,’ he said … ‘I’ll be in touch later if you are interested.’ I wasn’t. Back in my room, I called the guy I was casually dating, Mike Moz. He was working as a publicist at the time … ‘Donald Trump wants to have dinner with me.’ That got Moz’s attention … ‘You have to go … It’s a great opportunity for you …’
“What’s funny is that sex never once entered my mind. Call me naïve, but he was one of the few straight guys — hell, any guy — who didn’t immediately stare at my tits. Plus, he seemed really struck by the fact that I was a director. And I certainly didn’t think he was asking me there as an escort … I was hoping there would be no call and I would just have the decision made for me. But then Keith called. ‘Mr. Trump wants to know … if you are interested in dinner tonight.’ ‘Okay,’ …
“I called Keith’s number when I got to Harrah’s … ‘Come on up,’ said Keith. ‘It’s the penthouse.’ This wasn’t a red flag. I had been around enough celebrities to know sometimes they liked to show off and pull out the whole butler-and-personal-chef routine … Keith was there, guarding a giant set of double doors … He waved a hand at the door for me to enter, and I paused. ‘Go on in,’ he said … ‘Helllllllooo?’ I called out. And Trump came swooping in, wearing black silk pajamas and slippers. ‘Hi there,’ he said.
“Look at this motherfucker, I thought. I was just so mad. ‘Excuse me, I have the wrong room,’ I said, adding a southern edge of polite malice to my voice. ‘Sorry to interrupt, Mr. Hefner. I’m looking for Mr. Trump.’ His jaw went slack, and his eyes bugged. ‘What are you doing?’ I yelled. ‘Go put some fucking clothes on.’ … I think he was scared I was going to leave, because he was back almost instantly … in a full suit. … ‘That’s more appropriate,’ I said. I was still mad … We started talking, which meant he proceeded to go on and on without asking me anything about myself … I found myself getting more and more offended …
“‘Have you seen my magazine?’ … I know it was some kind of money magazine with him on the cover … ‘Really?’ I snapped, looking up at him. ‘Does this work for you normally?’ He looked perplexed … ‘Are you so insecure that you have to brag about yourself,’ I continued, ‘or are you just a fucking asshole? Which is it?’ He was so stunned, he just stood there … ‘Someone should take that magazine and spank you with it.’ ‘You wouldn’t,’ he said in a quiet voice … ‘Hand it over,’ I said [and] snatched it from him and rolled it up. ‘Turn around and fucking drop ’em,’ I said … It wasn’t dirty play or even foreplay. It was me being pissed off and him being shocked and neither of us wanting to back down from a challenge … For a second, I almost lost my nerve. He was still ‘The Donald,’ and he was much older than me. I was twenty-seven, and this guy was more than twice my age …
“But he turned, lowering his pants just enough for me to give him a couple of swaps. I got up and tossed the magazine on the side table with every intention of leaving … This is what stopped me: he turned around and said, in a slow, appraising voice, ‘I like you … You remind me of my daughter.’
“Now, I know everyone has made that sound sexual, and I feel so sorry for Ivanka because she’s had to hear all these things … It was not some perverted, ‘You remind me of my daughter. She’s so hot.’ No, it was, ‘You remind me of my daughter … You’re smart, you’re beautiful. You’re just like her. You’re a woman to be reckoned with.’ … His peacock plumage was now folded down and he became a more normal human being … ‘Have you ever seen my TV show?’ … ‘You,’ he said, ‘should be on that show … ‘First of all, it would show the world that you’re not a stereotypical porn star … Imagine the ratings it will bring … Every season I can pick someone, if I so choose’ … sitting down on the couch next to me.
“‘So, are you married?’ ‘No,’ I said. ‘I was, but I’m not now. But you’re married. What would your wife think of you being here with me?’ ‘Oh, don’t worry about that,’ he said. ‘It’s not a big deal, and anyway, we have separate bedrooms.’ I took that to mean that he no longer saw me as someone to sleep with … As if to prove his intentions were now legit, he jumped up to grab a photo. ‘Have you seen my son?’ He showed me a photo of Melania holding little Barron, who was only four months old. It was adorable, and I could tell it made him genuinely proud …”
Three hours later, still without dinner, and Stormy returns from the bathroom: “He was dead ahead on the bed. He was perched on the edge, like he had tried out different poses. A poor attempt at looking powerful. He had taken off the suit, and was down to his white briefs, a white V-neck, and socks.
“I sighed inwardly, keenly aware of two thoughts … There was the simple Oh, fuck. Here we go. But there was also a much more complex, sad feeling that none of what he said was true. He didn’t respect me. Everything he said to me was bullshit … I have been stripping since I was seventeen. I can read a room. I never caught it. For someone who is now famous for ‘Grab ’em by the pussy,’ you’d think he would have grabbed me by the pussy hours earlier. But up until that moment, he wasn’t vulgar or suggestive. I thought we had a great conversation and we’d gotten past the pajama thing by making him my bitch and proving my worth. And it all meant nothing. (Emphasis added.)
“I should have said, ‘Again?’ Let him know this wasn’t okay. But I was just, well, sad … So, here we go. It was an out-of-body experience. I was lying down on the bed with him on top of me, naked. I was just there, my head on the pillow. There was no foreplay and it was one position. Missionary. We kissed and his hard, darting tongue pushed in and out of my mouth. I thought, He’s even a terrible kisser …”
This is where I’ll leave the room. You’ll have to buy “Full Disclosure” or borrow it from a friend to learn more of the details. Suffice it to say he was happier than she was. That he called her “honey bunch” and added, “We need to see each other soon because we have business to discuss. We have to talk about getting you on ‘The Apprentice.’ That’s how ‘The Apprentice’ thing became bait. I didn’t want to have sex with him ever again, but he had convinced me that being on the show was at least a possibility. And he used that … ‘I need to see you tomorrow,’ he said. I promised he would, and I let myself out. … ”
Stormy explains the “why?” I expect many of you are asking: “You know that moment when you’re watching a horror movie and the girl thinks she can go back into the house and get her cat or whatever? And you just shake your head because you know exactly where this is going? Well, for me ‘the cat’ was getting on ‘The Apprentice’ …”
How about we jump ahead to Shark Week and Hillary Clinton and July 29, 2007: “‘Honey bunch,’ he said, ‘you made it … You must have the steak. It is fabulous. Fabulous … We’re almost a done deal getting you on the show … The season hasn’t started yet … But we’ll figure it out … ‘It’s Shark Week,’ he said. He turned on the Discovery Channel and stretched his arm on the edge of the couch. ‘Come here, honey bunch,’ he said. I inwardly groaned, but sure, let’s cuddle and talk about me getting on your show … So, I was sitting in this beautiful bungalow, and I was watching this crazy documentary filmed with real sharks tearing at bodies. And to say this guy was riveted is an understatement. I tried bringing up ‘The Apprentice’ thing between shark bites, but he kept putting me off …
“Then, to make it crazier, Hillary Clinton called. I could hear her voice through the receiver, and that accent saying ‘Donald.’ ‘Hello, Hillary,’ he said, briefly distracted from the sharks … She was up against Barack Obama seeking the Democratic nomination, and he had a whole conversation about the race, repeatedly mentioning ‘our plan.’ They also discussed a family trip they wanted to take together something involving a ski area. Who knows if Hillary was just humoring him. Even while he was on the phone with Hillary, his attention kept going back to the sharks … When he hung up, he was effusive about Hillary. ‘I love her,’ he said. ‘She is so smart.’ … Trump told me he and Hillary were great friends and that they had gone to the weddings of each other’s children. Not quite true. The Clintons attended his wedding to Melania, but maybe he didn’t want to bring her up.
“‘A lot of people say I should run for president someday … They want me to run because I can afford it. Who would want to? This is way more fun.’ Finally, after two hours of carnage, the sharks were done eating. And Donald was ready to make his move … Then he started to trace his finger on my thigh. ‘Oh, I can’t. I’m on my period.’ Which wasn’t true. Those were the magic words, though, and he was now totally not interested in pursuing sex that night. After all, you can’t have blood in the water. The next time we talked, he called me to tell me that I had been right. There was no spot for a porn star on Celebrity Apprentice. Okay, we’re done here, I thought.”
Meanwhile it’s important to note that, in his pursuit, Trump had called her multiple times while she was working and that her boyfriend, Moz, had known about her dinners. And so none of this was really secret.
This seems as good a time as any to find out who Stormy really is and where she came from. Stormy, I was surprised to learn, has a photographic memory and, for better, mostly worse, makes her childhood come alive: “My mom and the neighborhood were in a race to see which could go downhill faster. The population of the neighborhood changed just as the crack epidemic hit Baton Rouge. What was once a stable, working-class neighborhood became a real-time loop of ‘Cops.’ Even the yards gave up. The trees and lawns all died, and cars started getting parked in the yard … There were many days I came home from school to no electricity. We were always getting shut off for nonpayment …
“When I was about eight, my mom started disappearing for days at a time, probably with one of the guys she was dating. There would be no food, and I just wasn’t sure how long I would have to ration out saltines or whatever was still there …”
The horror, sadly, was only just beginning. She wrote this before the Kavanaugh confirmation but her story so very powerfully adds to our understanding about why it was that Dr. Ford and other victims hesitated to come forward. This broke my heart:
“One day I was out riding when I met a girl named Vanessa the way kids do, pausing to stare at each other until one says, ‘Do you wanna play?’ … One day when I was nine I rode my bike over and I couldn’t find Vanessa. By then I could just walk into the house. Her mom was changing a diaper. ‘She’s next door watching a movie,’ she said.
“It was weird, because I didn’t know a kid lived there. I’d only ever seen a guy in his forties, always home because he didn’t seem to have a job … I walked over and knocked on the door … He was at the door, opening it just a crack, then more when he saw me. It was the guy I always saw there. ‘Come in!’ he said, too much excitement in his voice. ‘We were just watching a movie.’ Vanessa stood in the hall between the living room and the back bedroom, alternating between looking down and then at me … I had interrupted something …
“‘Come on, Vanessa,’ he said. ‘Come in the back and talk to me.’ I made a decision. Whatever was back there, I needed to know about … ‘It’s a secret,’ he said. When I entered, he closed the door behind me. I was wearing the hot pink cotton bicycle shorts that were so big in the eighties and a huge shirt my mom got at Kmart … I looked down at my clear jelly sandals, the ones I loved so much even though they made everyone’s feet smell so bad. He took off my clothes, and the feeling I most remember is shock at what was happening.
“I was nine. I was a child, and then I wasn’t. It was the start of two years of this man sexually assaulting me. He was raping Vanessa, so I put myself between them, continually offering myself up so he would leave her alone. She was fragile and younger, I thought in my kid logic, and I was not … Everything would be finished by four thirty, when his wife would come home from work …
“You’re asking why Vanessa went over there so much. I know, I did, too. I can’t guess what hold he had on her. I don’t blame her, because she was a child doing what an adult told her she was supposed to do. I blame the adults in our lives. How did her mom let her be there every day for hours, feet from her house, and not know? … A year into the abuse, when I was ten, I slept over at Vanessa’s house …When I started to get tired, I figured I should go pee … Her parents had people over, a man and a woman. As I crept to the bathroom, I noticed they were using the hushed whispers that grown-ups talk in when they’re trying not to be overheard …
“‘I just don’t see why you let her play with Vanessa,’ said the male friend. ‘I don’t know,’ her dad said. ‘We try to do what’s right and not judge, but yeah, she’s white trash.’ … My face was burning hot, and I walked into the bathroom and quietly closed the door before I started sobbing. I looked in the mirror and for the first time I saw what they saw. The dirty clothes, the hair my mother never touched … My mother’s neglect, being sexually abused next door, just twenty feet away from where they were sitting discussing me — it was all to be expected for someone who wouldn’t amount to anything … It’s part of why I never sought help from an adult to stop the abuse. I thought that would just affirm what people thought about me. I suppose that’s what a serial abuser counts on — the notion that kids blame themselves …”
This is something all the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee should have read multiple times: “The following year, Vanessa started at my middle school and was having crippling anxiety … she had to see a guidance counselor. She told him what she had been through. I guess she said my name, because he called me in. ‘Is what Vanessa is saying happened to her true?’ he said, looking across the desk at me. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Were you there?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, and finally I was able to say it. ‘He did it to me, too.’ ‘Why are you saying that?’ ‘Saying what?’ I asked. ‘He – ’ ‘Vanessa has real problems,’ he said. ‘He didn’t touch you.’ ‘He did, I swear.’
“‘Then why are you fine?’ ‘I don’t know,’ I said. Was I? ‘Because you’re making it up,’ he said. ‘I don’t know why you would lie about this. Are you jealous of the attention she’s getting? Is that it?’ ‘No,’ I said. ‘Then why would you lie?’
“I didn’t answer. I looked at my hands until he told me to leave. I’d finally outright asked for help from an adult, and I was called a liar … After the guidance counselor, I never told a single person about the sexual abuse until this past June. I had been so successful blocking out what happened to me that it only came up when I recently went back to my old horseshoe neighborhood for a profile of my life. To show them my childhood home, we had to drive by the house where I was continually assaulted. Seeing it brought back a flood of feelings, and I broke down. I am still receiving flashes of memory, moments too graphic and sickening for me to share. Mainly it just hurts to remember being that vulnerable.” (Emphasis added.)
Perhaps you question her choices. Perhaps the very idea of participating in the porn industry appalls you. But Stormy is a survivor, and a successful survivor, at that. Stormy left home as soon as she could, living with boyfriend Andy, earning money exercising horses and answering phones near Louisiana State University when she met Amy: “We were all hanging out when someone pulled up in a brand-new purple Camaro. This pretty girl got out … ‘Look at my new car,’ she said, as if everyone wasn’t. ‘Did you get this for graduation?’ I asked. She laughed. ‘No, I graduated two years ago,’ she said. ‘I bought this.’ ‘You did?’ I said. ‘What do you do?’ ‘I’m a dancer,’ she said.
Stormy explains: “Now, there are gentlemen’s clubs, then there are strip clubs, and then there are titty bars. Cinnamon’s was a titty bar. Basically, a trailer” … Stormy, an underage high school student, panicked when she saw the bouncer checking IDs. “‘Hey, is Amy working tonight?’ I said her name like it was a magical spell. And it worked … The girls started coming over, bored and looking for something new to talk about … ‘You should do a guest set.’ ‘Have you ever danced before?’ ‘Where do you dance?’ ‘I’m still in school,’ I said. Only later did I realize everyone thought I meant LSU … The girls began to play dress-up with me … [They] talked me into doing a guest set. ‘It’s two songs,’ said Amy. ‘The first is up-tempo and dressed, the second is slower and more sensual as you go topless.’ … The girls were so supportive and were cheering me on and tipping me through my first song …
“The second song started and I thought, Here we go. I took my top off and no one laughed …When the song was over I did a quick bow and discreetly tried to pick up all the dollar bills. I made eighty-five dollars, more money in those two songs than I made answering phones all week at the barn.
“These women raised me, doing the job my mother had bowed out of … I grew up in a strip club, and like all the dancers, I called Cinnamon ‘Mom.’ My grades never suffered … I applied to a veterinary school in Texas, and in the spring I was accepted with a scholarship. But I still worried about living expenses. Part of the American dream is making money. I am a firm believer in capitalism …”
Stormy graduated to dancing at the Gold Club. “And I noticed that the girls … who invested in breast implants got more tips. I was already a 36B, heading to a C, but I wanted to go bigger … For the next two years, I continued to work at the Gold Club more than sixty hours a week. I was happy making money and saving up to buy a house … The problem was that I had topped out on rate. I’d done just about every magazine except Penthouse and Playboy. And the only way to bump your rate up after you top out is to do films.”
And do films she did. Having never seen them, I imagine Stormy and Thunder and Lightning did just fine. If you’re interested in learning about the industry, “Full Disclosure” offers an education. Meanwhile, Moz has exited and Stormy has fallen in love with and married Glen. Stormy reveals one stunning way in which the adult-actress-life differs markedly from the norm when it comes to deciding to bring a child into the world: “Glen came in like he’d had a revelation. ‘I want to have a kid,’ he said … The thought hung there in the space between us, just long enough for me to formulate a plan. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘But there are terms. You have to do porn.’ ‘Uh, what?’ He laughed. Poor guy thought I was joking … ‘Because if we ever split up, you can’t use it against me in court.’”
Given their odd universe, she made a compelling case. “And so, I got pregnant with a baby girl. All because my husband had sex with other women while I watched and worried about their makeup and angles so they’d look their best.”
And so it was that, baby in arms, one night, Stormy heard from someone she knew from Wicked: Gina Rodriguez, a publicist who suggested she could help her tell her story about Donald Trump. Stormy told her she wasn’t interested. But “In March 2011, I got another call from Gina. ‘Oh, my God,’ she said, panic in her voice. ‘Have you seen the internet? … There’s a story about you and Trump on The Dirty,’ she said … It’s a gossip site … she started reading it to me, saying I had had an affair with Trump. It said a friend leaked it. ‘So, do you want my attorney, Keith Davidson, to send them a letter?’
“‘YES!’ I yelled … My only thought was, This needs to go away. Glen was a mess, I was a mess — we were in no position to suddenly have a spotlight on us … That’s how Keith Davidson entered my life. I didn’t know that Davidson’s specialty was brokering sex tapes and the like. At the time, it just seemed like I’d been saved from humiliation. Glen was not going to be looking at a gossip website I had never heard of. I had shut it down …” Glen, who had been dealing with a major drinking problem, and was deeply depressed.
I’m going to summarize here, because much of this has become public information. A reporter from In Touch had gotten the story. The magazine, through Gina, offered Stormy $15,000 suggesting they’d publish one way or another, and that the money would either go to their source or to Stormy. Gina thought it had been Moz trying to sell the story. In Touch asked for, and Stormy took and passed, a lie detector test. When In Touch next called, they told Stormy they had to reach out to Donald Trump for a comment, which is when everything changed for her:
“I was running late for my usual MamaFit class … I pulled into a space that would leave the passenger side open for me to get my daughter out. I always had her in the backseat on the passenger side, in a rear-facing car seat. I was in a rush, so I got out and ran around the back of the car to get to her …
“A man came up behind me. I saw his Converse shoes first. They were navy blue and someone had drawn a star on them. Like a kid, or maybe he doodled. I turned around, taking the toy out of my teeth … He had both hands in his gray hoodie, which also looked expensive, with an asymmetrical zipper at the collar … I thought he was going to ask me how to get to his wife’s Lamaze class … He looked like he belonged to a woman, and nobody in three-hundred-dollar jeans asks you for a dollar. I have seen Vegas crackheads coming up to me. Not this. ‘Beautiful little girl you got there,’ he said, leaning in to look right at my daughter … It’d really be a shame if something happened to her mom,’ he said, still looking just at her. ‘Forget the story. Leave Mr. Trump alone.’
“He walked away, and it took me a few seconds for his words to even register. His hands stayed in his hoodie pockets. Did he want me to think he had a weapon? I looked around and he was gone. I got my daughter out of the car and I ran inside … It wasn’t until I was in the elevator that I thought, That guy just threatened to kill me. I stood in the center of the elevator. My face went numb and I couldn’t feel my feet. I began to shake uncontrollably, and I almost dropped the baby …
“People want to know why I didn’t immediately go to the police. If you want to make a police report, it’s public. This is how I imagined it would go: ‘Hi, I’d like to make a report about some guy who came up and threatened me.’ ‘Okay, what did he say?’ I picture the cop as genial but by-the-book. ‘He said this and this and “leave Mr. Trump alone.” ‘Why would someone tell you to leave Mr. Trump alone?’”
Her situation was beyond bizarre: “I had sex with Donald Trump and now I’m selling a story, well, someone else was trying to sell my story and I got caught up in it and I know they’ve reached out to Trump for comment and … Which would mean the entire world would know, including my husband, who had just tried to throw himself out of a moving fucking car. I was afraid to open a can of worms by telling Glen about the threat. Would he start to get paranoid about me leaving the house? I needed my freedom and, besides, I was used to caring for myself … So, I kept it secret.
“That seemed like the right decision soon enough, because In Touch disappeared on me … By the summer of 2015, Glen and I had successfully moved our family to Texas. Glen had stopped drinking and I was transitioning out of being a porn star and becoming known more as a director … I was famous enough that I provided for my family with feature dancer bookings all over the country, but not so known that I was recognized everywhere. Our daughter would soon be going to school, and not a single person in our little neighborhood knew what I did for a living …”
Everything changed on June 16, 2015, when Donald Trump announced he was running for president. “Seeing Trump on TV jogged people’s memories about all those times he used to call me on sets … Good old Gina resurfaced, acting like we had just been chatting a week before. ‘You should sell your story now,’ she said. ‘Why did you ghost me?’ I flat-out asked her. … She told me she had been threatened but didn’t elaborate. She said the magazine was threatened by Trump’s attorney, who she identified as Michael Cohen …
“On October 21, two weeks after the Access Hollywood ‘grab ’em by the pussy’ tape was leaked, Jessica Drake ‘came forward’ in a press conference with Gloria Allred. She said that while we were at the Lake Tahoe golf tournament in 2006, Trump invited her to the penthouse. Jessica stated that she didn’t feel right going alone and that she went with two other women. ‘When we entered the room, he grabbed each of us tightly in a hug and kissed each one of us without permission.’ She also said that Trump invited her back to the penthouse and she was offered ten thousand dollars for sex …”
More summarizing. Everyone in the press now wanted this story. And so, in many ways, this is a story about fear — Donald Trump’s fear that his philandering might sink his chances to become president, and Stormy’s fear that her life and daughter’s life were in danger. Her fear that admitting that she had slept with Donald Trump might sabotage her marriage.
While Donald Trump turned to Michael Cohen, Stormy turned to Keith Davidson. Sadly, Stormy’s very legitimate fear made it easy for Michael Cohen to successfully collude with Keith Davidson to silence her with $130,000 and a nondisclosure agreement. Stormy replaced Davidson with Michael Avenatti, whose legal pressure and public taunts helped reveal Michael Cohen’s mediocre lawyering and prompted him to violate the NDA by talking about it. And the revelation of his payment and reimbursement by the Trump company of the $130,000 quickly led to a far-ranging investigation of his finances by the Justice Department. Cohen subsequently admitted he made illegal campaign contributions at the behest of Donald Trump and pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations.
There are stories in “Full Disclosure” you might find interesting: Stormy’s several accounts of her national television appearances. There’s Jimmy Kimmel’s shrewd understanding of how trapped she was by the Davidson/Cohen NDA and his significant kindness. There’s Stormy’s smart understanding of the challenges she faced on “The View” and the behind-the-scenes reality of making “60 Minutes.” And there’s the sheer joy of a childhood dream fulfilled by her “Saturday Night Live” appearance:
“As Trump, Alec [Baldwin] dismisses Cohen and tries to sweet-talk me. ‘Oh, come on, we’ll always have Shark Week,’ he said. ‘I solved North and South Korea, why can’t I solve us?’ ‘Sorry, Donald, it’s too late for that,’ I said. ‘I know you don’t believe in climate change, but … a storm’s a-coming, baby’ … When the show was over, we all gathered on the stage to say good night to the audience, just as I had seen over and over again. The girl from Baton Rouge who wasn’t going to amount to anything was standing up there just like she’d imagined …”
There is also the insight we gain about the story beneath the story we’ve watched on television or read in the papers. What this has meant to Stormy, how her real day-to-day personal life has been obliterated and transformed by death threats and bodyguards, by cruel attacks by Rudy Guiliani and an arrest in Ohio while performing at a strip club:
“The bogus charges were dropped first thing the next morning, but only after I endured hours in painfully tight handcuffs and spent the night in jail … With police body cam footage of me getting hauled away in handcuffs splashed across television news, Glen reached his breaking point and began making preparations to file for divorce. Days later, he emptied our bank account, disappeared in the car with our daughter, and filed a temporary restraining order against me that prevented me from coming near her. I had the agonizing experience of reading about the restraining order and my divorce papers, which were full of disgusting and completely false claims, on a gossip site … I was devastated. I had almost no money, the car was gone, I had no idea where my daughter was, and I was forbidden by law from even talking to her on the phone …
“The whole reason for everything I had done — to protect my family — was suddenly blowing up in my face. Glen was hurt, angry, and afraid, and what he did in that moment I know he thought was right, but it’s still difficult to square with the man I fell in love with. I guess it’s a testament to just how painful and stressful 2018 has been for my family, since the news broke of a brief tryst I had more than a decade ago with a goofy reality TV star who now lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
“Thankfully, once the dust settled, Glen and I were able to come together and let our love for our daughter and for each other be our guide as we made more fair and sensible arrangements for ending our marriage. He dropped the restraining order nonsense, returned the car, and we’ve agreed to share custody of our beautiful little girl. We may not be a married couple any longer, but we’ll always be her parents.”
If that’s the personal consequences, here’s a look at the larger social and political and cultural consequences: “I have been dancing in clubs since I was seventeen. As my fan base grew over two decades of work in film and feature dancing, my demographic was usually middle-aged white men. Forty-five- to sixty-five-year-old white dudes — Republicans, basically. I lost a lot of them …
“They were replaced and outnumbered by people of color, gay men, and lots and lots of white women in their forties … [The] group of gay men is more emotional, and after the show they talk to me about feeling bullied by an administration that makes their marriages and freedoms seem less safe. Their fear is real, and when they confide in me, it comes from an authentic place …
“The women I see on the road have a lot of anger … [They’re] angry at Trump, who seems to be a stand-in for every man who’s ever bullied them … ’You have to get him,’ they say … Many of these women are quieter as they wait in line to talk to me, then grip my arm to tell me about someone they didn’t speak up for. A friend who killed herself after being raped. Or their own stories, feeling voiceless and unprotected. I stand there, a girl in a cute dress who just stripped onstage a few minutes before. These women transfer all the energy to me and leave feeling unburdened, but now it’s mine to carry … absorbing it all until it hits some limit I didn’t see coming, and I am suddenly on the floor of my hotel room, sobbing when no one can see me. I let myself feel it once, and then I get back up …”
It’s always easy to suggest that if someone else’s personal sacrifice has accomplished enough good for the rest of us then it’s all been worth it. I began by suggesting Stormy vs. Donald was a compelling and critical matchup. I know who, on the deepest level, won this one. As for Trump, an inveterate sore loser, he has transformed his “honey bunch” into “horseface.”
As for Stormy, she leaves us with this: “Where does my story go from here? I can’t say I know, but I’m excited to see what comes next. I can look back on a life more full and certainly more interesting than I, as a little girl back in Baton Rouge just trying to survive and spend time with my horses, ever thought it would be. This most recent chapter has been quite the adventure, with ups and downs, new friendships formed, and old relationships lost. But as exciting and trying as things are right now, I know it won’t always be like this. As a friend of mine keeps reminding me, nothing lasts forever.”
Stormy’s story, “Full Disclosure,” is a story well worth telling.
