Stormy Daniels got her start in politics the same way most people get a used dresser – from a post on Craigslist.

“Seeking a female candidate to challenge David Vitter in the Republican primary for the United States Senate in 2010. We are looking for a candidate with a history in some aspect of the adult entertainment industry,” read the ad placed in 2008.

Vitter, the Republican senator from Louisiana who championed family values, had been ensnared in a prostitution scandal and some cheeky pranksters wanted to troll him on it.

But soon, what started as a gonzo prank idea was turning into something if not serious then at least real. “WE HAVE FOUND OUR PORN STAR,” read a follow-up post.

The porn star in question was Daniels, and in no time she was grabbing national headlines with her slogan that promised “Screwing People Honestly” – unlike her male opponent.

As wild as that was, that turned out to only be the prelude to Stormy Daniels’ main event. She currently faces a much more powerful male adversary, the president of the United States, as she prepares to go public on Sunday in a TV interview to give details about her alleged 2006 affair with Donald Trump.

The interview with Anderson Cooper, which is expected to break viewership records for CBS’s venerable 60 Minutes news magazine show, is easy to dismiss as frivolity. But her allegations, and the legal maneuvers Trump’s allies have employed to try to keep them quiet, could have implications spanning not just sex and sexual politics – but campaign finance laws and violence against women.

“You don’t know who become the pivotal players in history,” said Jonathan Tilove, who chronicled Daniels’ first steps in politics as a correspondent for the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

‘My daughter’s name is Stephanie, not Stormy’

Born Stephanie Gregory Clifford in Baton Rouge in 1979, Daniels grew up with her mother, who worked as a trucking company manager. Her dad was seldom around. As a girl she loved dancing and horses, but if her parents hoped she might pursue a childhood dream of becoming a vet, it was not to be. She left home and began stripping at 17; by 21 she was performing in adult films under the stage name Stormy Daniels.

She considers it her real name, but her mother, Sheila Gregory, can’t abide it.

“My daughter’s name is Stephanie, not Stormy,” she said when the Guardian reached her at home Tuesday. “Please forgive me if you think I’m being rude,” she added, before hanging up.

Gregory may not have made peace with her daughter’s career, but by any measure, Daniels is extremely successful at what she does, both in front of the camera and behind it. She started directing in her mid-20s, and won best new starlet at the 2004 AVN awards, referred to as the “the Oscars of porn”. The following year, she made a number of cameos in mainstream film, including Judd Apatow’s blockbuster hit The 40-Year-Old Virgin. (On social media, Apatow has said he admires her work.)

It was clear she was smart, prepared and comfortable with the media frenzy Bradley Beychok on Stormy Daniels

In 2009, when her Louisiana campaign began, Daniels was living in Florida and not registered with either party. And as those who worked with her, most of whom did not want to speak on the record, quickly realized, she was not going to be a prop, but sensed opportunity. “She was smart enough to know that we weren’t trying to drag her through some college prank, that maybe this was an avenue to explore,” said a person with knowledge of the campaign.

Her platform, thin though it was, was socially liberal and fiscally conservative. But mainly it was about trolling Vitter, and she was a master provocateur. Asked if she was pro-life, for instance, she said she was “pro-condom”. Asked if she really just wanted to embarrass Vitter, she replied flatly: “I don’t see how I could possibly embarrass him more than he’s already embarrassed himself.”

Most notable though, was her ability to stay in the public eye, despite her never formally entering the race. “It was clear she was smart, prepared and comfortable with the media frenzy,” said Democratic operative Bradley Beychok, who met with Daniels during a “listening tour” in Baton Rouge.

The Craigslist post turned what should have been a low-key election into a national spectacle, and Louisiana is just quirky enough of a place that national election forecaster Nate Silver didn’t rule her out. “She’s certainly not without her, um, charms,” Silver wrote at the time.

Daniels’ campaign would prove quite literally explosive. At the height of her political momentum, the Audi belonging to her political manager burst into flames, and though no one was ever apprehended, blurry surveillance footage showed someone loitering around the car and getting into it shortly before it detonated.

Soon after that, and amid a domestic violence arrest, Daniels opted out of the race. Vitter would go on to win, riding the wave of anti-Obama backlash in 2010. But when he ran for governor a few years later, his Democratic opponent won in an upset by reviving the prostitution scandal that Daniels had worked to highlight.

Target on her back

Today, as she prepares to take on the president, Daniels is – improbably, perhaps, at 39 – on top of her industry, with a confidence and acerbic Twitter profile to match.

Her second foray into politics began in February, when the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, had paid Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet about her story just before the 2016 election.

This image released by CBS News shows Stormy Daniels with Anderson Cooper. Photograph: AP

In response to the bombshell, the tabloid In Touch Weekly published an interview with Daniels it had been sitting on since 2011, kept under wraps due to legal threats from Trump’s circle. In the interview, Daniels describes in explicit detail a consensual, nearly year-long sexual dalliance with Trump, allegedly begun weeks after his wife Melania gave birth to their son, Barron.

Sunday’s interview, however, will be the first time Daniels has spoken about the matter since Trump forged his own political career, and the first time she will address the efforts to muzzle her, which she has been fighting in court.

Details from Daniels’ account further shape the narratives that first emerged about Trump and his relationship with women during the 2016 election. More than a dozen women came forward to accuse Trump of sexual harassment and assault in the lead-up to the election. And while Daniels’ alleged affair with Trump was consensual, the context is nonetheless informative about how he views women.

And Daniels is not alone. Another adult film star, Jessica Drake, who accused Trump of trying to buy sex from her, claims she also has “confidential information” about Trump’s relationship with Daniels, according to a 2016 non-disclosure agreement or NDA.

On Tuesday, the former Playboy model Karen McDougal became the second woman this month to challenge Trump’s efforts to silence her, announcing she was suing the president to be released from a 2016 legal agreement that restricted her ability to speak about her alleged affair with the future president.

Separately, a judge this month ruled that a defamation suit brought by former Apprentice star Summer Zervos, who accused Trump of harassing her, may go forward, clearing the path for other sexual misconduct allegations against the president to be aired.

“It is settled that the president of the United States has no immunity and is ‘subject to the laws’ for purely private acts,” the judge declared, citing the precedent set by a lawsuit brought against Bill Clinton by his alleged mistress Paula Jones two decades ago.

Meanwhile, the president, who has denied all the claims brought against him, remains committed to keeping Daniels quiet.

Daniels’ legal team, in a clever bit of maneuvering, has offered to pay back every dollar she was paid in the NDA for the chance to speak freely. Her team claims the agreement is null and void because Trump never signed it, and they are moving ahead with the CBS interview despite a threat from Trump’s camp of up to $20m in damages.

Daniels now has a target on her back, and her lawyer has said she’s been physically threatened and is under 24-hour security. But her background in adult entertainment may give her a rare liberty other women Trump has tried to shame into silence do not possess. Namely, she is not easily embarrassed and she doesn’t care if people don’t like her.

“Slut and whore are words used by people who feel threatened,” she responded to a troll on Twitter who accused her of promiscuity. “I find power in them.”