Actress Stormy Daniels Hit With $800,000 Call For Legal Fees, Penalties

(L) Full Disclosure, a memoir by adult film actress Stormy Daniels, at a Barnes&Noble store in Chicago, Ill. on Oct. 2, 2018. (R) Lawyer Michael Avenatti speaks to the media outside the office of the LAPD after posting bail for domestic violence, Los Angeles, Cal., on Nov. 14, 2018. Scott Olson/Getty Images; AP Photo/Michael Owen Baker

Pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels faces the prospect of nearly $800,000 in legal fees and penalties after lawyers for President Donald Trump asked a court to compel her to pay the sum for a failed defamation suit.

Attorney Charles Harder told Judge S. James Otero on Dec. 3 that his law firm had spent more than 500 hours working on the case, ringing up a legal bill of almost $390,000.

Harder also asked the judge to impose an additional $390,000 in sanctions as a deterrent against a “repeat filer or frivolous defamation cases.” He argued the fees and penalties were deserved because of the extraordinary nature of the defamation case.

Otero didn’t immediately rule on Harder’s request. He noted that fees by Harder’s firm—as high as $840 an hour—were reasonable but the 580 hours spent on the case appeared to be excessive and might be trimmed in his eventual award.

‘Meritless Claim for Defamation’

“This action is virtually unprecedented in American legal history,” Harder wrote in court papers. Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, “not only brought a meritless claim for defamation against the sitting president of the United States, but she also has engaged, along with her attorney, in massive national publicity.”

Daniels has written a book about her alleged one-night affair with Trump in 2006, and has been active on the media circuit promoting it and her side of the story.

She sued Trump earlier this year seeking to break a non-disclosure agreement she signed days before the 2016 election about the alleged tryst.

Trump has denied the affair took place.

Daniels also claimed that five years after the alleged affair she was threatened to keep quiet by an unidentified man in a Las Vegas parking lot. She then released a composite sketch of the mystery man.

She sued Trump for defamation after he responded to the allegation by tweeting, “A sketch years later about a nonexistent man. A total con job, playing the Fake News Media for Fools (but they know it)!”