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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowAn attorney for Stormy Daniels filed a motion Wednesday seeking to question President Donald Trump and his attorney under oath about a pre-election payment to the porn actress aimed at keeping her quiet about an alleged tryst with Trump.
If successful, it would be the first deposition of a sitting president since Bill Clinton in 1998 had to answer questions about his conduct with women.
Attorney Michael Avenatti is seeking sworn testimony from Trump and Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, about a $130,000 payment made to Daniels days before the 2016 presidential election as part of a nondisclosure agreement she is seeking to invalidate. Avenatti’s documents were filed in U.S. District Court in California.
Avenatti is part of a growing list of lawyers looking to question Trump. Attorneys for a former contestant on one of Trump’s “Apprentice” TV shows have said they want to depose the president as part of a defamation suit. And the president’s legal team continues to negotiate with special counsel Robert Mueller over the scope and terms of an interview with the president.
Avenatti wants to question Trump and Cohen for “no more than two hours.” In the filing, he says the depositions are needed to establish if Trump knew about the payment, which he refers to as a “hush agreement,” and if he consented to it.
“We’re looking for sworn answers from the president and Mr. Cohen about what they knew, when they knew it and what they did about it,” Avenatti told The Associated Press.
While he noted that “in every case you always have to be open to settlement,” Avenatti said that “at this point we don’t see how this case would possibly be settled.”
In a statement to CBS, Cohen’s attorney David Schwartz called the filing a “reckless use of the legal system in order to continue to inflate Michael Avenatti’s deflated ego and keep himself relevant.”
The White House, which has said Trump denies the relationship, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
A former businessman, Trump is no stranger to high-stakes litigation, sitting for depositions in contract and defamation lawsuits over the years. Those interviews show his deep experience in giving statements to lawyers, but also show a witness who could be voluble, boastful and, at times, combative.
Georgetown University law professor Naomi Mezey said a deposition presented risks because it is the way to get the president in a vulnerable position. “And President Trump is a particularly vulnerable president,” Mezey said.
Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, detailed her alleged 2006 tryst with Trump in a widely watched interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes” that aired Sunday. She said she’d had sex with him once, shortly after Trump’s wife, Melania, gave birth to the president’s youngest son.
She also said that a man approached her in a Las Vegas parking lot in 2011 when she was with her infant daughter and threatened her with physical harm if she went public with her story.
The interview prompted a new flurry of legal action, with a lawyer for Cohen demanding that Daniels publicly apologize to his client for suggesting he was involved in her intimidation. Daniels responded by filing a revised federal lawsuit accusing Cohen of defamation.
Cohen has said he paid the $130,000 out of his own pocket and that neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction. Avenatti has argued that the “hush agreement” Daniels signed in October 2016 is invalid because it was not signed by Trump.
A hearing before Judge S. James Otero in the federal court's Central District in Los Angeles is set for April 30.
As precedent, the motion notes that Clinton was deposed while in office in 1998 during Paula Jones’ sexual harassment suit. That came after the Supreme Court ruled that a sitting president was not immune from civil litigation on something that happened before taking office and was unrelated to the office.
Jones’ case was dismissed by a judge and then appealed. The appeal was still pending when Clinton agreed to pay $850,000 to Jones to settle the case. He did not admit wrongdoing. Later in 1998, Clinton also gave grand jury testimony about his relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
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