LONDON: Stormy Daniels, the adult film actor, broke her silence after former US president Donald Trump’s conviction to say he should be jailed, in an interview published in British tabloid The Mirror at the weekend.
“I think he should be sentenced to jail and some community service working for the less fortunate, or being the volunteer punching bag at a women’s shelter,” Daniels said in the interview, published late on Saturday.
A jury of 12 New Yorkers on Thursday found Trump guilty on 34 counts of business fraud for trying to cover up hush money payments to Daniels on the eve of the 2016 presidential election.
Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, was paid $130,000 to keep silent and prevent scandal from breaking ahead of the election, in which Trump narrowly defeated Hillary Clinton.
After years of exchanging insults with Trump on social media, Daniels now says she finally has been “vindicated”, although she was “shocked” at how quickly the jury made a decision – one that made Trump the first ever former US president to be convicted of a crime.
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Daniels also accused the White House hopeful of being “completely and utterly out of touch with reality” and compared him to a child at one point in the interview.
‘Intimidating’
The former adult film actor and director helped bring Trump down in court with her gripping testimony, which included graphic descriptions of what she says was a casual sexual encounter in 2006.
“Being in court was so intimidating with the jurors looking at you,” she said in the Mirror interview, adding that she was glad it was proved that she had been “telling the truth the entire time”.
“It’s not over for me. It’s never going to be over for me. Trump may be guilty, but I still have to live with the legacy.”
The 45-year-old had remained uncharacteristically quiet in the days following the Thursday conviction.
Daniels’s husband Barrett Blade had previously told CNN that she was “still processing” the trial. He suggested that she could be threatened by Trump’s supporters.
“You know, all the MAGA idiots are going to be coming after her,” Blade said, referring to Trump’s Make America Great Again movement.
Daniels also said she would never escape death threats from Trump’s supporters, the Mirror reported.
‘Vicious’ atmosphere
“It’s so vicious and threatening… from the standpoint of just the fear of what somebody might do,” Daniels’s lawyer Clark Brewster said of the atmosphere around the trial in an interview with a local ABC News channel.
Daniels is a self-made woman who rose from a difficult childhood and through the challenging world of adult movies to become a successful businesswoman.
But in a recent documentary, she revealed that behind her outwardly tough, humorous persona on social media, she has been hurt by the constant insults from Trump and his supporters.
“Back in 2018 that was stuff like ‘liar’, ‘slut’, ‘gold digger’,” she said in the film, “Stormy”.
“This time around, it is very different. It is direct threats, it is, ‘I’m going to come to your house and slit your throat’, ‘your daughter should be euthanised’.”
The trial and its revelations have added to tensions in the already bitterly divided country.
On Friday, Trump launched into a stream of insults and non-factual claims, lashing out that the trial and the judge who presided over it.
His campaign on Friday said that it had raised nearly $53 million in online donations after the conviction, boasting that the verdict had boosted his support “like never before”.
Trump is due for sentencing on July 11 but is expected to appeal the verdict. He potentially faces a prison sentence but is much more likely to receive probation.
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