Stormy Daniels said Monday her feelings toward Michael Cohen have softened after he admitted to working with President Donald Trump to keep her silent about their alleged affair, saying “I guess I forgive him.”
Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, said in an interview with Don Lemon on “CNN Tonight” that she harbored “ill will” for the President’s former attorney due to his work trying to keep her from speaking about her alleged affair with Trump. Trump denies having such an affair.
“I definitely think that I had a lot of ill will for him — towards him — but in the end, you know, he kinda did the right thing. He admitted that I wasn’t lying and that Trump had ordered him to do this. So in a way I guess I forgive him,” Daniels said.
A source with direct knowledge of the matter told CNN last week that Trump directly told Cohen to get a restraining order against Daniels to keep her from speaking out.
Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney, pleaded guilty in August to eight criminal counts, including campaign finance violations, tax fraud and bank fraud as part of a deal that includes jail time.
In the plea deal, he implicated the President and admitted that “in coordination and at the direction of a candidate for federal office,” he kept information from becoming public that would have harmed Trump during the 2016 election cycle. This includes the payments Cohen made or helped orchestrate designed to silence women, like Daniels, who claimed affairs with then-candidate Trump.
Daniels told Lemon that she passed “within three feet” of Cohen at LaGuardia Airport a few days ago, and he acknowledged her and her bodyguards with a smile.
“It was very strange,” Daniels said. “He looked happy and healthy, though. He looked like he had a weight off his shoulders.”
