Full Disclosure

by Stormy Daniels

  “I just started this really good-paying job at a sound company,” he said. “Let me talk to my wife.” He called me the next day.

  “I’m in,” he said, and after a brief pause, added, “Are you gonna pay me?” He told me he felt like he was just supposed to come along. We picked up sweet Chris, my emcee, at my gig at Country Rock Cabaret in St. Louis. He just seemed so capable that, again, I had the voice telling me to bring him along. “You’re coming with me,” I said.

  And he joked in a hypnotized voice, “I’m coming with you.” He is one of the most gifted emcees out there. Give him a mic and he will announce your arrival and pump up the crowd like you invented stripping. The guys are all so different, but they’re brothers now.

  At my meet-and-greets after shows, Travis and Brandon stand beside me as the person hands either Chris or Dwayne their cell phone to take a picture. They all hear the stories people confide in me. Men and, especially now, women take those minutes to tell me about their lives and how they identify with me. As I’ve said, they tell me they need me to save the world.

  It’s a burden to take in all this energy, but I know it’s what I am supposed to be doing. There were so many times that the universe took care of me—times where I should not have done well, shouldn’t have gotten out of a situation, or shouldn’t have risen above because no one helped me. You’ve seen this time and again in these pages: the universe takes my hand and says, “I got you.” And I think it wants its payback.

  *

  I decided I would do one more big media thing, but only because it felt like family to me. Saturday Night Live, my favorite show in the world, asked me to take part in the cold open of the May 5 episode. There was talk of it for a few weeks, and then, just a few days beforehand, I got word that it was a go. They wanted to do a huge cold open, an old-fashioned cavalcade of stars, with all these unexpected stars playing the roles of people caught up in the various scandals of the Trump administration.

  They wanted me to be the last and biggest surprise, and kept my appearance so top secret that they didn’t tell any of the cast beforehand. I entered 30 Rock through an underground parking entrance and was so busy pinching myself that I almost ran right into Scarlett Johansson as we both boarded the building’s secret elevator. She was there to play Ivanka Trump, and Jimmy Fallon would be Jared Kushner. Upstairs, I was spirited to my dressing room, right next door to Ben Stiller’s. He was perfectly cast as Michael Cohen, calling everyone on his various burner phones. As word got out that I was there, cast members kept stopping by to take selfies with me. I couldn’t believe these people I admired were losing it that I was there. I only had a few minutes with my favorite, Kate McKinnon, because she had to do heavy-duty makeup to play crypt keeper Rudy Giuliani. But my other absolute favorite, Leslie Jones, was able to talk to me for a while. In the hallway, I hugged Ben Stiller, and we got to talking about how much we preferred directing over acting. Um, hello, I thought in the moment, I am talking to Ben Stiller about directing Tropic Thunder and Zoolander.

  Alec Baldwin walked in, and I made a funny face at the absurdity of him dressed as Donald Trump. He’d brought his wife, Hilaria, who at any moment would be giving birth to their baby boy. He was just as charming as you want him to be. But the real surprise was Lorne Michaels. He’d left a note with flowers in my dressing room, but he also stopped by. I don’t get starstruck, but I have known this man all my life through watching SNL, the show he created in 1975. All those nights I stayed up late in Baton Rouge, or, later, watching it Sunday morning after taping it because I had a Saturday night show. I tried not to gush or give off the feel of crazy-stalker fan, but I did tell him this was my dream come true. He invited me to sit with him in his special spot in the bleachers once the cold open was finished.

  Once the show started, each reveal got a cheer, and I almost broke character when I got the biggest wave of surprised applause.

  As Trump, Alec dismisses Cohen and tries to sweet-talk me. “Oh, come on, we’ll always have Shark Week,” he said. “I solved North and South Korea, why can’t I solve us?”

  “Sorry, Donald, it’s too late for that,” I said. “I know you don’t believe in climate change, but … a storm’s a-coming, baby!”

  And then we got to say those magic words together: “Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!”

  I went and sat with Lorne to watch the host, Donald Glover, and for me, the second show was watching Lorne in action. It was amazing to see somebody of his stature still be so involved in every bit of the process, exactly how I try to be as a director.

  When the show was over, we all gathered on the stage to say good night to the audience, just as I had seen over and again. The girl from Baton Rouge who wasn’t going to amount to anything was standing up there just like she’d imagined. When I stepped off the stage, I had a realization: that was the best thing that had ever happened to me besides having a child. The only thing that could ever top it would be having another baby—and that was not happening.

  “What do I do now?” I said, back in the car with my bodyguards, Travis and Brandon, on our way to the after-party. “Should I, like, buy a puppy or something?”

  *

  Then there are moments where I am back down on earth. This was all so hard on my marriage. For months, Glen became more and more critical of me, saying I was being dramatic about needing security. He got a sense of what it’s like when I went home for Mother’s Day weekend. I gave my dragons the day off, and on a whim, Glen and I went to the May 11 Lynyrd Skynyrd concert at the Dos Equis Pavilion, this huge outdoor amphitheater in Dallas. Bad Company was opening for them and were already playing when we got there slightly late. It was an old-fashioned date night, the kind women’s magazines always tell you to have to save your marriage. We were in the third row, Paul Rodgers was singing “Feel Like Making Love,” and Glen hugged me, just like he did when I fell in love with him watching Snow Patrol sing “Chasing Cars” more than ten years before.

  Then Bad Company left the stage. And the lights came on, and people saw me. This girl leaned over. “Hey, can I get a picture with you?” she whispered. “I’m a big fan. Do you mind if I just get a quick selfie with you?”

  Glen looked away. I smiled. “Sure,” I said. She did, and that’s all anyone else had to hear. They descended on us. “Can I get a picture?” “Can I get a picture?” People began pulling at me, guys putting their arms over me to get me into the frame of their cameras. Glen started to block people, but they were coming from all sides. Someone ripped my shirt trying to grab me, and Glen was done. We fled to the parking lot and sat in the car. No one chased us, it wasn’t some zombie apocalypse thing, but when I was in that space, people wanted a piece of me.

  I was used to it and blamed myself for thinking I could just do something like this without Brandon and Travis. But Glen had never seen anything like it. In the car, he admitted it was downright scary, comparing it to Finding Nemo, when the seagulls are all coming for the crab, saying, “Mine. Mine. Mine.”

  I was relieved he saw it up close. “That’s what it’s been like,” I told him, not saying what I wanted to say: “I told you I wasn’t exaggerating.”

  Still, I didn’t want the night to be a wash. When we heard Lynyrd Skynyrd start up, we sneaked back in, safe again in the dark. We left halfway through “Free Bird,” walking away as they sang about someone who would rather be alone than be chained.

  *

  I was in Raleigh on June 7, in the middle of a two-night run at the Men’s Club. My phone was buzzing with messages that morning, but I chose to ignore it because an equestrian center run by a horse friend of mine had opened early just for me. With no cameras, and nobody watching except my kindred-spirit crazy-wonderful horse folk, I got to ride again. It felt amazing to be that free.

  When I get a ton of texts, it usually means I am being talked about in the media. For my sanity, I just sort of peek quick to get the gist. If it’s important, Denver or Michael will tell me. That morning
I was getting random Facebook messages of support and apologies for what Trump’s pal and lawyer Rudy Giuliani said about me. I didn’t want to look, but a girlfriend sent me the text of his speech with the subject “Fuck Rudy.” He attacked my integrity during a speech in Tel Aviv the day before. “I’m sorry, I don’t respect a porn star the way I respect a career woman or a woman of substance or a woman who has great respect for herself as a woman and as a person and isn’t going to sell her body for sexual exploitation.… I mean, she has no reputation. If you’re going to sell your body for money, you just don’t have a reputation.”

  So all day I’ll be a talking point about how we value women in society. Who gets to be believed. I’d rather they talk about the lawsuit we filed the day before against Michael Cohen and Keith Davidson. We have seventeen texts between them, Davidson acting more like Trump’s errand boy than my attorney. Michael Avenatti emailed me the texts in a document.

  I put off reading them for a while, knowing it would just start a round of me pacing and cussing. But finally, I made myself do it. On January 17, the day In Touch published my 2011 interview, Cohen texted Davidson, desperate to get me to go on The Sean Hannity Show to discredit the story live on the air. “I have her tentatively scheduled for Hannity tonight,” Cohen wrote in an iMessage. Then there are all these texts back and forth. Meanwhile, my life was falling apart and Glen was screaming at me.

  Davidson tells Cohen he couldn’t get me to do it and says he can try for tomorrow. Cohen writes back: “Let’s forget tonight. They [Fox news and the Trump administration] would rather tomorrow so they can promote the heck out of the show.” (His brackets, not mine!)

  Two hours later, Cohen messaged Davidson about Trump’s strategy again. “Keith, the wise men all believe the story is dying and don’t think it’s smart for her to do any interviews. Let her do her thing but no interviews at all with anyone.”

  A minute later, Davidson—who was supposed to be my attorney—responded, “One hundred percent.”

  “Thanks pal,” wrote Cohen, quickly adding, “Just no interviews or statements unless through you.”

  “Got it,” Davidson responded.

  I wonder if they made friendship bracelets as they were colluding against me on behalf of Donald Trump? Michael had evidence, too, that when I finally fired Davidson, he tipped off Cohen immediately that I was going to share my story.

  The wise men were wrong about the story dying. Maybe they should have asked a wise woman. It never occurred to any of these men that I would someday have a voice.

  EPILOGUE

  Though my book has to end somewhere, my story goes on. The last month has been as eventful as any that came before it.

  In July, I was arrested while performing at a strip club in Columbus, Ohio, in what seems to have been a politically motivated sting operation orchestrated by a vehemently pro-Trump detective. The bogus charges were dropped first thing the next morning, but only after I endured hours in painfully tight handcuffs and spent the night in jail.

  Reports of the whole scary episode instantly made headlines. With police body cam footage of me getting hauled away in handcuffs splashed across television news, Glen reached his breaking point and began making preparations to file for divorce. Days later, he emptied our bank account, disappeared in the car with our daughter, and filed a temporary restraining order against me that prevented me from coming near her. I had the agonizing experience of reading about the restraining order and my divorce papers, which were full of disgusting and completely false claims, on a gossip site.

  I’d stopped wearing my wedding band months earlier and we had discussed ending our marriage for a long time, but what Glen did still came as a massive shock. I was devastated. I had almost no money, the car was gone, I had no idea where my daughter was, and I was forbidden by law from even talking to her on the phone.

  Those terrifying days after Glen vanished with our daughter and threatened to keep her from me forever were the darkest days of my life. The whole reason for everything I had done—to protect my family—was suddenly blowing up in my face. Glen was hurt, angry, and afraid, and what he did in that moment I know he thought was right, but it’s still difficult to square with the man I fell in love with. I guess it’s a testament to just how painful and stressful 2018 has been for my family, since the news broke of a brief tryst I had more than a decade ago with a goofy reality TV star who now lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

  Thankfully, once the dust settled, Glen and I were able to come together and let our love for our daughter and for each other be our guide as we made more fair and sensible arrangements for ending our marriage. He dropped the restraining order nonsense, returned the car, and we’ve agreed to share custody of our beautiful little girl. We may not be a married couple any longer, but we’ll always be her parents.

  Where does my story go from here? I can’t say I know, but I’m excited to see what comes next. I can look back on a life more full and certainly more interesting than I, as a little girl back in Baton Rouge just trying to survive and spend time with my horses, ever thought it would be. This most recent chapter has been quite the adventure, with ups and downs, new friendships formed, and old relationships lost. But as exciting and trying as things are right now, I know it won’t always be like this. As a friend of mine keeps reminding me, nothing lasts forever.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Note

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Epilogue

  Copyright

  FULL DISCLOSURE. Copyright © 2018 by Stephanie Clifford. Note copyright © 2018 by Michael Avenatti, Esq. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.stmartins.com

  Frontispiece photograph courtesy of the author

  Cover design by Michael Storrings

  Cover photograph by Keith Munyan

  The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 978-1-250-20556-8 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-1-25020557-5 (ebook)

  eISBN 9781250205575

  Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact your local bookseller or the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com.

  First Edition: October 2018