In closing the case, the judges left the decisions of the lower courts in effect by rejecting the case. The U.S. Circuit Court’s 9th Court of Appeals, based in San Francisco, last year agreed with a Los Angeles federal judge who ruled in 2018 that Trump’s statements were not defamatory and were protected by the First Freedom of Speech guarantee Amendment to the US Constitution.
“The decision confirms what we have said all along: that the Stormy Daniels case against the president was frivolous and punishable, ”Said Trump’s attorney Charles Harder.
Clark Brewster, Daniels’s lawyer, said he expected the judges to take over the case because there’s “confusion and uncertainty”At first instance on the legal issue presented.
Daniels has said she had a sexual encounter with Trump at a Lake Tahoe hotel in 2006 – a year after marrying his third wife Melania and more than a decade before the businessman who became a politician became president.
Trump denied the sexual encounter.
Daniels said that in 2011, an unknown man approached her and her daughter in a Las Vegas car park and threatened it after she agreed to talk about her experience with Trump in a media interview.
Daniels said the man “leaned over, looked at my daughter and said, ‘This is a beautiful girl. It would be a shame if something happened to her mother. ‘”
In 2018, more than a year after Trump became president, she released a sketch of the man. Trump responded on Twitter to the release of the draft, writing.
He wrote: “A sketch, years later, about a nonexistent man. Total cheating, playing Fake News Media for Fools (but they know it)! “
Daniels sued Trump in federal court alleging defamation, saying that her comment conveyed her belief that she was a liar.
His lawyers said the judge erred in dismissing the suit under a Texas state law that allows for quick resolution of cases that appear to overwhelm the right to freedom of expression. Trump also received $ 292,000 in legal fees and $ 1,000 in sanctions.
Daniels was previously represented by attorney Michael Avenatti, who was later indicted in three separate cases on charges of defrauding several clients, including Daniels, lied to the IRS and tried to extort Nike Inc. In February 2020, he was convicted in the Nike case.
Trump also faces separate defamation lawsuits related to alleged sexual assaults, both of which he denied, brought by two women – E. Jean Carroll, a former editor at Elle magazine, and Summer deer, a 2005 competitor on his old reality show “The Apprentice. “