The Gathering Stormy

How many times have we heard that Trump is a “counter-puncher,” employing the verbal equivalent of the “Chicago Way”? If you insult him a little, he’ll insult you ten times worse. If you tell the truth about him, he’ll say you’re lying. If you say that you’d have beaten him up in high school, he’ll say he’d beat you up now — and that you’re mentally weak and a crybaby. He’s like the Mole Man. Whatever low road someone else takes, he’ll dig out an even lower road.

This tactic, learned at the feet of Roy Cohn and honed over decades of tabloid-war juvenilia and shady business dealings, served him well in the Republican primaries. No one wanted to attack Trump because they knew he’d counter-attack viciously and, again, shamelessly. It’s a bully’s tactic we all encountered in high school (unless, of course, you were one of the bullies). It’s much like the old adage about not wrestling with pigs — you’ll get dirty and the pig likes it. Voters priced the piggishness into Trump’s persona, but they punished normal politicians who resorted to the same tactics.

In other words, in almost a Nietzschean fashion, Trump uses the decency of others against them.

..  She also could speak with expertise about one of the few things he truly cares about: his sexual reputation.
.. What I find fascinating is how Donald Trump created the very conditions that could spell his downfall (though punditarily speaking, I don’t think it will go that way).

Trump’s Stormy History: The Seven-Year Battle Between the President and the Porn Star

Since 2011, Stormy Daniels and Trump lawyer Michael Cohen have battled over her allegations of an affair, a standoff that has now reached the White House

The turning point for Ms. Clifford—when she began to seriously consider speaking out—was a statement Mr. Cohen provided to news media on Feb. 13 acknowledging the deal with Ms. Clifford, people familiar with the matter said.

“Just because something isn’t true doesn’t mean that it can’t cause you harm or damage,” Mr. Cohen said.

Ms. Clifford viewed his comment as Mr. Cohen calling her a liar, and she questioned why Mr. Cohen could speak freely while she had to remain silent, according to people familiar with the matter.

 .. In the call soon after, Mr. Davidson told Mr. Cohen that Ms. Clifford believed he had breached the agreement. Mr. Cohen explained the FEC had sought his response to a complaint about the payment, according to people familiar with the call.

.. In late February, Ms. Clifford decided she wanted to blow up the deal and that Mr. Davidson wasn’t the man for a full-on confrontation, people familiar with the matter said.

She hired Mr. Avenatti, an aggressive, media-friendly Los Angeles lawyer who last year won a $454 million verdict in a lawsuit alleging fraud against Kimberly-Clark Corp. and its spinoff Halyard Health Inc.

.. Ms. Clifford, who has been drawing big crowds lately at strip clubs around the country, recently established a crowdfunding site to finance her legal battle. As of Tuesday morning, it had raised more than $268,000.

Storm Watch: the latest developments in the Stormy Daniels case

She faces formidable opposition from Trump attorney Michael Cohen, who has claimed he personally paid the $130,000 for Daniels’s silence. He obtained a restraining order at the end of February, shortly before Daniels filed her lawsuit in court, and has now filed papers in federal court accusing Daniels of violating the terms of the nondisclosure agreement. The Washington Post reports that Cohen is seeking a total of $20 million in damages — $1 million per alleged violation.

But another one of Cohen’s legal disputes might undercut his efforts. He is pursuing a libel suit against BuzzFeed, and the website is attempting a legal maneuver that might allow Daniels’s records of any relationship with Trump to be made public.

.. Cohen, through Essential Consultants, LLC, the company he set up to pay Daniels last October, will request to move Daniels’s dispute out of the open courts back to private arbitration, reports Bloomberg.

And Cohen’s efforts probably have the support of President Donald Trump. In a separate filing on the president’s behalf, another Trump attorney said he agreed with Cohen’s decision to move the case back to private arbitration.

Michael Avenatti, Daniels’s attorney, responded to Cohen’s suit in a series of tweets, calling it “yet another bullying tactic from the president and Mr. Cohen.”

“They are not attempting to remove this case to federal court in order to increase their changes that the matter will be decided in private arbitration,” he wrote.

.. Meanwhile, Buzzfeed is using a legal maneuver that might give Daniels the chance to tell her story.

The news outlet is embroiled in its own litigation with Cohen, who is suing BuzzFeed for libel over its publication of the Steele dossier, a collection of allegations about Trump’s dealings with Russia, last year. As part of that lawsuit, BuzzFeed has asked Daniels to preserve all documents and records relating to her dealings with Cohen and her 2016 nondisclosure agreement.

.. If BuzzFeed’s gambit is successful, lawyers may have to depose Daniels in that case. And unless a judge intervenes, according to Politico, it’s possible all those details might be made public.
.. Trump’s lawyers are reportedly weighing legal action against CBS, though it’s unclear that would actually stop the network from airing the interview.

.. Daniels’s mother is a Trump supporter

Daniels’s estranged mother, Sheila Gregory, said in an interview with the Dallas Morning News that she doesn’t want the scandal to hurt the president.

“If Mr. Trump runs four more times, I would vote for him every time,” Gregory said. “I like him. I like the way he handles things. It’s time this country is put back where it belongs — taking care of the people here instead of the people who don’t belong here.”