Porn actress Stormy Daniels said she was threatened in a bid to keep her silent about her alleged fling with Donald Trump, which she detailed in a highly-anticipated primetime TV interview broadcast.
She is seeking to be released from a non-disclosure agreement she signed 11 days before the 2016 presidential election that brought Trump to power, for which she was paid USD 130,000 -- leading to allegations that the payment amounted to an illicit contribution to his campaign.
Daniels yesterday told Anderson Cooper on CBS's "60 Minutes" that Trump had not asked her to keep their 2006 sexual encounter secret, but said she was approached by a man in a Las Vegas parking lot after agreeing to sell her story for USD 15,000 in 2011.
"I was in a parking lot, going to a fitness class with my infant daughter. Taking, you know, the seats facing backwards in the back seat, diaper bag, you know, gettin' all the stuff out," she said.
"And a guy walked up on me and said to me, 'Leave Trump alone. Forget the story.' And then he leaned around and looked at my daughter and said, 'That's a beautiful little girl. It'd be a shame if something happened to her mom,'" Daniels said.
Cooper asked: "You took it as a direct threat?"
"I was like, does this, does this normally work for you? And he looked very taken back."
She told him: "Someone should take that magazine and spank you with it."
Asked what she would say to Trump if he were watching the interview, she said: "He knows I'm telling the truth."
Michael Avenatti posted a picture on Twitter of a computer disc along with the text: "If 'a picture is worth a thousand words,' how many words is this worth????? #60minutes #pleasedenyit."
"This is about the cover-up," Avenatti said on "60 Minutes."