At roughly the same time that former President Donald Trump plead not guilty to criminal charges Tuesday afternoon in a Manhattan courtroom, he notched a win in a federal appeals court in California against the adult film star at the heart of the New York indictment.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit issued a six-page order directing Stormy Daniels to pay nearly $122,000 in legal fees to Trump’s attorneys. That sum is in addition to the more than $293,000 that Daniels had been ordered to pay after losing a libel case against the former president in federal district court and $245,000 for unsuccessfully pursuing an earlier appeal.
The New York and California cases aren’t directly related, but the timing was striking since they involve the same underlying events: Daniels’ claim that she had an affair with Trump — which he has denied — and efforts by Trump’s former longtime lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen to stop her story from becoming public ahead of the 2016 presidential election by orchestrating a $130,000 hush money payment.
