Trump faces trouble if he tries to keep porn star Stormy Daniels silent, legal experts say

Show Caption Hide Caption White House: Trump won arbitration against Stormy Daniels The White House said Wednesday that President Trump previously has won an arbitration case against adult film star Stormy Daniels, who alleges an affair with Mr. Trump and is suing him.

WASHINGTON – The salacious details of Stormy Daniels' alleged affair with Donald Trump more than a decade ago have seeped out to the public, but the porn-star-turned-household-name has been barred from telling the story herself.

That might soon change, according to legal experts, despite a temporary restraining order the president's legal team won last week against Daniels, who is fighting in court to tell her story about their alleged tryst.

A legal document referred to as a "hush agreement" that she said she signed weeks before the 2016 presidential election keeps her from dishing on Trump, but it could paint the president in a corner, said Imre Szalai, a national expert on arbitration law with the Loyola University School of Law in New Orleans.

Trump and his legal team can try to keep Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, silent through arbitration — and his lawyers indicated that’s the preferred course.

If the president admits being a party to an agreement that paid Daniels to stay quiet, the Federal Election Commission would probably view it as a violation of campaign finance law, Szalai wrote on his Outsourcing Justice blog.

If Trump doesn't contest Daniels' ability to go public, she could embarrass the president, who's been accused of sexual harassment by several women and was recorded on a Hollywood Access tape boasting about grabbing women sexually.

"If the hush payment violated election law, then this lawsuit and the procedural dilemmas concerning the enforcement of the arbitration agreement have placed Trump in a Catch-22 situation if he or the company seeks to compel arbitration," Szalai wrote.

That could put Trump in even more legal peril because it might draw the interest of special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating whether there were links between the Trump campaign and Russians who allegedly sought to influence the 2016 presidential election, said Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University.

"This is well within Mueller's wheelhouse," Turley said. "Mueller could seek answers about the payment."

Amanda Werner, a lawyer who tracks arbitration issues for the liberal group Public Justice, said non-disclosure agreements are "pretty standard" methods of buying people's silence to prevent public embarrassment.

"Unfortunately, arbitration is able to generally ensure that people can't tell the truth and can't talk to the media," Werner said. "But in this case, it's just really hard to enforce without further incriminating the president. He's kind of stuck in a tough situation here, but I think it's hopefully going to help the truth come out."

Read More: Stormy Daniels' attorney says Trump knew about hush money paid to porn star

Read More: Read Stormy Daniels' lawsuit against Donald Trump

Daniels filed a lawsuit Tuesday against Trump, claiming that a $130,000 settlement she reached with Trump's longtime lawyer Michael Cohen to keep quiet about the alleged relationship was no longer valid because Trump had not signed the document. The lawsuit marked the first time Daniels openly spoke of having a "hush" agreement.

In the suit, Daniels claimed she had an affair with Trump in 2006 and 2007. She said Cohen and Daniels signed the agreement to secure her silence Oct. 28, 2016, days before the presidential election.

Tom Spiggle, a Washington attorney familiar with non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) in the workplace, said Daniels found a creative way to air her story legally despite the restrictions on her ability to speak out.

"Litigants are protected (within reason) from being penalized for what they say in court pleadings. So she is able to say that she had an affair with Donald Trump as necessary background for the declaratory action without being in violation of the NDA — even though she'd be in violation of the NDA for saying the exact same thing outside of court," he said. "This means Daniels has found a way to have her cake and eat it, too."

On Wednesday, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders thrust the White House into the center of the legal battle when she revealed that Trump's lawyer had won an arbitration proceeding against Daniels. That marked the first time the White House acknowledged the confidential agreement or Trump's role in it.

Asked whether Trump knew about the payment at the time it was made, she said: "Not that I am aware of."

Daniels' lawyer Michael Avenatti insists otherwise.

“The suggestion that you would have an experienced, educated attorney like Mr. Cohen who would run off, half-cocked without any knowledge of his client, that he would negotiate and draft a detailed agreement that included his client as a party, that he would engage in weeks of negotiation, that he would reach agreement, that he would then send $130,000 in connection with that agreement, that he would then later institute an arbitration proceeding without knowledge of his client, all of this to those of us that practice under the law as attorneys, it’s ludicrous,” Avenatti said on CNN.

Daniels is scheduled to appear this weekend at the Solid Gold strip club in South Florida, which is promoting the event as Daniels' first public appearance since filing suit against Trump.

"Stormy no longer wishes to remain silent, and SOLID GOLD proudly supports her right to speak," according to the club's Facebook page.

Contributing: David Jackson, USA TODAY