Trump tumult: One judge hears case on $130,000 hush-money payment to adult entertainer; another judge asks her to pay him $121,000 in legal fees
In a vivid illustration of how broken and partisan American politics and judiciary has become, an appeals court in California ordered adult entertainer Stormy Daniels to pay more than $121,000 in legal fees reimbursement to former President Donald Trump in a 2018 defamation suit she lost. The ruling came hours after prosecutors in New York charged Trump with a 34-count felony accusing him falsifying business records while allegedly paying her $130,000 in hush-money to buy her silence for a one-night stand.
The California court award, obtained by Indian-American attorney Harmeet Dhillon, whose law firm represented Trump in the case, is unrelated to the merit or otherwise of the New York case, but it prompted Trump and his followers to claim the criminal indictment was a political hit job and miscarriage of justice. The former President returned to his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida on Tuesday evening after pleading not guilty in the New York case to launch what was virtually a campaign speech before loyal followers, raging that it was partisan hatchet job, and attacking the prosecutors and the judge hearing the case.
In a furious 25-minute speech, Trump unloaded on Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, calling him a “criminal,” and went after Judge Juan Merchan and his family, alleging he was a “Trump-hating judge with a Trump-hating wife and a family whose daughter worked for Kamala Harris.” He was alluding to Judge Merchan’s daughter Loren, who is reportedly a partner in Authentic Campaigns, a progressive digital firm that has worked on Democratic campaigns. Loren also worked as the digital director for Kamala Harris’ 2020 presidential campaign from February 2019 until December 2019, according to her LinkedIn profile.
All this appears unrelated to the suit that Stormy Daniels lost, which goes back to 2018 and centers on her claim that Trump defamed her by publicly ridiculing her allegation that an unknown man threatened her and her daughter over her purported affair with Trump.
Daniels claimed that shortly after she began cooperating with a magazine for a story about her alleged affair, an unnamed man had approached her saying “Leave Trump alone. Forget the story” and “That’s a beautiful little girl. It’d be a shame if something happened to her mom,” in reference to her infant daughter. Trump mocked her claims in a 2018 tweet, claiming that man was “non-existent” and the charge was “a total can job,” prompting the defamation suit, which Daniels now says was initiated by her former attorney Michael Avenatti against her wishes.
A court dismissed the case and ruled that Trump’s tweet constituted “rhetorical hyperbole,” and ordered Daniels to pay Trump’s legal fees. In a tweet, Dhillon, whose firm represented Trump in the case, congratulated him “on this final attorney fee victory in his favor this morning.”
“Collectively, our firm obtained over $600,000 in attorney fee awards in his favor in the meritless litigation initiated by Stormy Daniels,” Dhillon, who tweets under the handle @pnjaban said. The Chandigarh-born Dhillon lost an inner-party election in January to head the Republican National Committee, going down 51-111 to incumbent Ronna McDaniel.
While all this was happening in New York and California, in a further illustration of the politicisation of the judiciary and the legal system, voters in Wisconsin on Tuesday chose to reverse the political and ideological direction of their state by electing a liberal candidate to the State Supreme Court, flipping majority control from conservatives.
In a statewide election watched nationwide amid the tumult in New York, California and Florida, Janet Protasiewicz, a liberal Milwaukee County judge, defeated Daniel Kelly, a conservative former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice who sought a return to the bench by around 10 points. The result is expected to reverse the state’s abortion ban and end the use of gerrymandered legislative maps drawn by Republicans.
In a system inherited from colonialists, judges and district attorneys in US are elected, rather than nominated, in the questionable belief that elected officials are less likely to be partisan than nominated or appointed ones. It hasn’t always worked out that way; both nominated judges (at the federal level) and elected ones (at the state level) typically hew to the ideological orientation of the party they choose to align with.
