In a highly anticipated interview with 60 Minutes, Stephanie Clifford, an adult film star who performs as Stormy Daniels, claimed that she was approached by a man in a parking lot who threatened her to stay quiet about her alleged sexual encounter with Donald Trump.

Clifford sat down with Anderson Cooper to provide details of her alleged relationship with the president and explain the circumstances surrounding the $130,000 payment she received from the president's attorney, Michael Cohen, right before the 2016 election.

In the interview, Clifford, 39, said she struck the deal with Cohen because she was "concerned for my family and their safety." Those fears, she said, stemmed from a threat she received in 2011, after she agreed to divulge details about her alleged affair with Trump in an interview with In Touch magazine for $15,000.

The magazine, which published the interview earlier this year, initially opted not to run it because Cohen threatened to sue.

Clifford told Cooper that a few weeks after doing the interview, a man approached her in a Las Vegas parking lot and told her to "leave Trump alone" and "forget the story."

"I was in a parking lot, going to a fitness class with my infant daughter," she said. "And a guy walked up on me and said to me, 'Leave Trump alone. Forget the story.' And he leaned around and looked at my daughter, and said, 'That's a beautiful girl, it would be a shame if something happened to her mom."

Asked if she took the man's remarks as "a direct threat," Clifford replied: "Absolutely."

"I was rattled. I remember going into the workout class. And my hands are shaking so much, I was afraid I was gonna drop her," she said, referring to her infant daughter who was with her at the time.

Clifford said she did not go to the police out of fear. And when she was approached by Cohen about the "hush" payment in the weeks before the presidential campaign, she said, she made the deal out of fear.



"They made it sound like I had no choice," she told Cooper. "As a matter of fact, the exact sentence used was, 'They can make your life hell in many different ways.'"

Clifford and her lawyer, Michael Avenatti, have filed a lawsuit to have the entire 2016 agreement tossed out. Meanwhile, Cohen and other lawyers involved have claimed that Clifford has repeatedly violated the terms of the agreement that paid for her silence.



In a letter sent to Clifford's attorney Sunday, Cohen's lawyer, Brent Blakely, denied that his client had any connection to the 2011 incident in Las Vegas, and questioned whether it had actually happened.



"In truth, Mr. Cohen had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with any such person or incident, and does not even believe that any such person exists, or that such an incident even occurred," Blakely wrote. Stating that the accusations amounted to libel and "intentional infliction of emotional distress," he demanded that Clifford and Avenatti retract their remarks.

Avenatti confirmed to BuzzFeed News that he had received Blakely's letter after the 60 Minutes interview aired Sunday.

Lawyers for Cohen and Trump did not respond to requests for comment Sunday night. The White House has also remained quiet since the interview aired, and did not respond to questions from BuzzFeed News Sunday.

