Adult film star Stormy Daniels appeared visibly disheveled and bloated as she smoked a cigarette outside a theater in Georgia on Thursday. The sighting came just days after her former lawyer, Michael Avenatti, was transferred from federal prison to a halfway house, as shown in exclusive photos.
“The 47-year-old porn princess wasn’t exactly ready for her close-up as she rocked rumpled cargo pants with a carabiner and heavy eye makeup while sucking on a cancer stick outside the Avon Theater in suburban Atlanta,” the New York Post reported.
The photos eventually wound up online on various social media platforms.
Daniels, who received a $130,000 “hush money” payment arranged in 2016 by Donald Trump’s then-lawyer Michael Cohen to remain silent about an alleged sexual encounter with the future president, was at the center of his 2024 Manhattan conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records. She had just arrived at the venue to perform “an evening of storytelling and comedy” when she was photographed for the first time since Avenatti’s release from prison last week to a federal halfway house in California.
“The Louisiana native’s disheveled look was a far cry from the smut icon’s heyday, when she often wore glittery low-cut dresses and sported flawless bleach blonde hair,” The Post reported.
Daniels, who was born Stephanie Gregory Clifford, showcased a sleeve of tattoos as she entered the theater.
Trump, meanwhile, has denied having an affair with Daniels, an encounter that reportedly occurred in 2006 when Melania Trump, his future wife, was pregnant with their son, Barron.
Michael Avenatti, 55, was transferred to a halfway house in Los Angeles on April 8, with a projected release date set for September 2028. Photos obtained by The Post show the once-stylish attorney wearing white flip-flops and black sweatpants while he was occupied with a mop and bucket.
The twice-convicted felon stole millions of dollars from clients, including $300,000 in book advance money from Daniels. He was also caught committing tax fraud and attempting to extort Nike. Currently, he is serving a reduced sentence of 11 years and 3 months for these crimes, The Post noted.
During the 2024 trial, CNN legal analyst Elie Honig called it a disaster that Daniels was cross-examined after her testimony against him.
Although Honig found Daniels’ testimony about a 2006 sexual encounter with Trump in a hotel room “plausible,” he said that her responses during Trump’s team’s cross-examination raised doubts about her reliability.
“So it‘s interesting because I was doing our live coverage, following along with our minute-by-minute updates from inside the courtroom, and I had the exact opposite impression. Now, you had the benefit of being in the courtroom, so I will defer to that, but we do also have to be careful when we play sort of amateur psychologists to the jurors’ movements, right?” Honig began.
“My impression was she was plausible in her explanation of what happened in that hotel room. It‘s hard for me to believe that a juror heard that and thought this is entirely made up,” he said.
But the cross-exam, boy, her responses were disastrous. I mean, do you hate Donald Trump? Yes, of course, she does. That‘s a big deal. When the witness hates the person who‘s liberty is at stake, that‘s a big damn deal. And she‘s putting out tweets, fantasizing about him being in jail. That really undermines the credibility,” he added.
Honig continued: “The fact that she owes him $500,000, she, by order of a court, owes Donald Trump a half million dollars and said, ‘I will never pay him, I will defy a court order,’ the defense is going to say, ‘She‘s willing to defy a court order. She‘s not willing to respect an order of a judge. Why is she going to respect this oath she took?’ So, I thought it went quite poorly on the cross-exam. At the end of direct, I thought, ‘Okay, they got what they needed,’ but I think the cross is making real inroads.’”