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Donald Trump, Stormy Daniels, and Ben Roethlisberger.
- Porn star Stormy Daniels says President Donald Trump had Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger take her back to her hotel room a day after her romp with the future president in 2006.
- Daniels made the comment in 2011 to InTouch, which published the full interview Friday.
- The comments were published after The Wall Street Journal reported that Daniels received $130,000 from Trump's lawyer just weeks prior to the 2016 election to keep quiet about the alleged encounter.
Porn star Stormy Daniels told celebrity gossip magazine InTouch in a 2011 interview that President Donald Trump had Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger walk her back to her hotel room after she and the future president had an alleged romp.
Daniels reportedly received $130,000 from Trump's lawyer before to the 2016 election to keep quiet about the alleged 2006 sexual encounter, The Wall Street Journal reported last week.
Daniels told the tabloid that the night after she hooked up with Trump, which she says happened at a Lake Tahoe celebrity golf tournament, she caught the Manhattan billionaire at a party with the the young Steelers quarterback, who was coming off of his first Super Bowl win.
"When I got there, he was already with him," Daniels said. "He had Keith, his bodyguard, call me and ask me if I was coming. When I got there, I called Keith and he told me where he was sitting and he brought me over. And he was hanging out with Ben for a long time. A couple other people around, nobody famous. Mostly people trying to hang on to them."
She said Trump "excused himself" from the table and made Roethlisberger "promise to take care of me."
"I stayed another 15-20 minutes and Ben Roethlisberger actually walked me up to my room that night because Donald told him to," she continued. "Yeah, he walked me all the way to my hotel room."
Roethlisberger has twice faced allegations of rape and legal proceedings stemming from the allegations, including one that he raped a woman in his hotel room at the same Lake Tahoe celebrity golf tournament just two years later. That civil suit was settled in 2012.
The quarterback has a somewhat longstanding relationship with Trump.
Just prior to the election last fall, Trump mentioned during a Pennsylvania rally that he and Roethlisberger were friends, telling a story about a time the duo was golfing and the quarterback hit a ball into a tree so hard that he killed it.
"The ball hit the tree so hard, I swear I said, 'Ben, within two years that tree is going to be dead,'" Trump said. "And you know what? Two years later … that tree was dead. He is a strong guy, and a good guy, too. Big Ben."
"We love Big Ben," he said earlier. "Big Ben is a friend of mine."
The Wall Street Journal reported last week that one of Trump's top lawyers sent $130,000 to Daniels just weeks before the 2016 presidential election to keep her silent about the encounter.
Citing people familiar with the matter, the newspaper reported that Michael Cohen, who was the Trump Organization's top attorney for about a decade, arranged for the payment to Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford. The payment followed a negotiation between her lawyer and Cohen on a nondisclosure agreement.
Though the president faces more than a dozen allegations of sexual misconduct dating back decades, "in this matter, there is no allegation of a nonconsensual interaction," The Journal reported.