Trump awarded nearly $122,000 in legal fees from Stormy Daniels defamation case

On the same day that former President Donald Trump was arrested in New York on charges related to alleged hush money payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels, he was awarded over $121,000 in legal fees, to be paid by Daniels, in another case where she had sued him for defamation.

Daniels had sued Trump over an April 2018 tweet that claimed a forensic sketch of a man who had allegedly threatened her over the purported affair she had with Trump in 2011 was a “total con job.” Although the judge dismissed the case and ordered Daniels to pay Trump’s legal fees in 2018, she appealed the order, arguing the fees were too high. Recently, the court ruled in favor of Trump and ordered Daniels to pay the legal fees.

The legal fees are for work done by lawyers at Harder LLP and Dhillon Law Group. According to CBS News, the court found that Daniels’s argument that Trump’s fee request was unreasonable and excessive “is not well-founded.”

A federal appeals court had previously ruled that Daniels owed $300,000 to Trump, resulting from her failed defamation lawsuit. Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, had previously stated that she would “go to jail before I pay a penny” to Trump. Meanwhile, Eric Trump, the former president’s son, celebrated Tuesday’s ruling, saying the new fees awarded to his father are “in addition to the roughly $500k” Daniels already owes him.

Trump was arrested and arraigned on Tuesday in Manhattan in a separate case related to Daniels. He was charged with 34 counts of business fraud following an investigation into the hush money payments he made to two women in 2016, ahead of the presidential election. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all of the charges, and he is not expected in court again until December.

Harmeet Dhillon, of Dhillon Law Group, also expressed her support for Trump on social media, tweeting her applause for Trump after the ruling. “Congratulations to President Trump on this final attorney fee victory in his favor this morning. Collectively, our firm obtained over $600,000 in attorney fee awards in his favor in the meritless litigation initiated by Stormy Daniels,” Dhillon wrote.