(Bloomberg) -- The company created by Donald's Trump's personal lawyer to facilitate a $130,000 “hush payment” to Stephanie Clifford to keep her quiet about an alleged 2006 tryst with Trump accepted Clifford's request to invalidate their non-disclosure agreement.
Attorneys for Michael Cohen and the company, Essential Consultants LLC, said in a filing late Friday in federal court in Los Angeles that they won't sue Clifford, an adult film actress known as Stormy Daniels, to enforce the agreement. This will leave President Trump as the only defendant to try to enforce the deal.
Clifford sued on March 6 to nullify a confidentiality pact she says she struck with Cohen in October 2016 to keep quiet about the alleged affair in the days before the election. She argued the document was invalid because Trump didn't sign it, even though she took the $130,000.
Essential Consultants countered, saying Clifford faced more than $20 million in damages for violating the agreement.
Now, Cohen's company wants Clifford to return the $130,000, according to a letter to her lawyer, Michael Avenatti, that was included with the court filing.
Avenatti said in a tweet that Cohen was back to “playing games” and trying to protect Trump.
“He is now pulling a legal stunt to try and ‘fix it' so that we can't depose Trump and present evidence to the American people about what happened,” Avenatti said.
Cohen is still facing a defamation claim by Clifford in the case related to a statement he made that she says implied that she was a liar.
To contact the reporter on this story: Edvard Pettersson in Los Angeles at epettersson@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Elizabeth Wollman at ewollman@bloomberg.net
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