A quick read of the Amended Stormy Daniels Complaint

[jberryhill]

3. No, illegal is illegal

If the purpose is illegal, then as a contract claim per se, the court doesn't matter.

The other hazard for Daniels in going into the whether the NDA was an agreement to remain silent about the agreement and payment itself, is that it does get a step closer to a plausible claim that by agreeing to get paid not to speak about the agreement, she was engaged in blackmail.

I had touched on the difference between the federal statute defining "blackmail" and the colloquial meaning of the word in a prior post.

In essence, most people think about "blackmail" as getting paid to be quiet about something "bad" about someone - i.e. broadly some sort of embarrassing information. The actual federal statute is:

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/873

18 U.S. Code § 873 - Blackmail

Whoever, under a threat of informing, or as a consideration for not informing, against any violation of any law of the United States, demands or receives any money or other valuable thing, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.

Now, I haven't kept abreast of every one of Avenatti's numerous television appearances. One aspect of the circumstances in general which is unclear to me is how the ball got rolling on the NDA in the first place.

Daniels attorney at that time - Davidson - is in the business of extracting money from people for locking down sex tapes etc.. That's what he does for a living. Also, Daniels has never alleged, in the original complaint or in this one, that the NDA itself was the product of any sort of coercion or threat. In the interview, she says:

When a gossip website reported a few months later that she'd had an affair with Mr. Trump, Stormy Daniels publically denied it. Five years later, Donald Trump won the Republican nomination for president.

Stormy Daniels: Suddenly people are reaching out to me again, offering me money. Large amounts of money. Was I tempted? Yes-- I struggle with it. And then I get the call. "I think I have the best deal for you."

Anderson Cooper: From your lawyer?

Stormy Daniels: Yeah.

The deal was an offer not to tell her story. It came from Mr. Trump's attorney Michael Cohen. In return for signing this non-disclosure agreement, Cohen would pay her $130,000 dollars through a Delaware-based limited liability corporation he had established in mid-October 2016 called essential consultants. Daniels says the agreement was appealing because it meant she would receive some money but also not have to worry about the effect the revelation of the affair would have on her child who was now old enough to watch the news. She signed the agreement eleven days before the election.

So, what sorts of deals was Davidson pursuing on her behalf, such that he would ring her up and say "I got one."

Now, sure, at the time, Daniels may not have understood the deal itself to constitute an illegal campaign contribution, but among her contentions in the Amended Complaint, she is now claiming the contract to be void as an illegal agreement not to disclose a violation of federal law - i.e. that the contract is void because she was committing blackmail under the definition above.

It's sort of like fighting a parking ticket by arguing, "My car couldn't have been parked in that space, because I was using it at the time as the getaway driver for a bank robbery." I mean, yeah, that will certainly be effective against the parking ticket, but probably not an argument I would advance on behalf of my client.