Reuters/Carlos Barria; Bill Haber/AP
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders; former adult film star and director Stormy Daniels.
- During a press briefing on Wednesday, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders responded to questions about President Donald Trump's alleged 2006 affair with former porn star Stormy Daniels.
- While reiterating Trump's denials that the affair ever took place, Sanders also claimed that Trump won an arbitration case, marking the first admission from the White House that Trump was involved with Daniels in legal proceedings.
- Daniels says she met Trump at Lake Tahoe in 2006 and began a sexual affair that continued sporadically for about a year.
President Donald Trump is not happy with how White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders handled questions from reporters about his alleged sexual affair with former porn star Stormy Daniels, CNN reported.
"POTUS is very unhappy," a source close to the White House told CNN. "Sarah gave the Stormy Daniels storyline steroids yesterday."
When asked during a press conference on Wednesday whether Trump approved a payment made to Daniels in October 2016 to keep her from talking about the alleged affair, Sanders deflected.
"Look, the President has addressed these [questions] directly and made very well clear that none of these allegations are true," Sanders said. "This case has already been won in arbitration. And anything beyond that, I would refer you to the president's outside counsel."
Later in the press conference, when pressed on the details of the arbitration case, Sanders said it was won in the president's favor by his personal attorneys. She referred reporters to the president's outside counsel for more details.
It appears that Trump is upset with Sanders because, as CNN noted, her admission that Trump won an arbitration case is the first time the White House admitted that the president was involved with Daniels in any legal proceedings.
Meanwhile, Daniels' personal lawyer, Michael Avenatti, has denied any such victory took place, telling CBS News that Sanders' claim is "completely false."
Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, says she met Trump at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe in July 2006, and the two allegedly began an affair.
He was married to Melania Trump at the time, and she had just given birth to their son Barron.
Just weeks before the 2016 presidential election, Trump's longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen paid $130,000 out of his own pocket as part of an agreement that would keep Daniels from talking about an alleged 2006 sexual encounter with Trump.
On Tuesday, her lawyer filed a civil lawsuit against Trump, accusing the president of invalidating that agreement because he never officially signed the NDA.
The lawsuit also argues that Cohen took "considerable steps ... to silence Ms. Clifford through the use of an improper and procedurally defective arbitration proceeding hidden from public view."