When Stormy Daniels watched former President Donald Trump's arraignment on April 4, she said part of her felt satisfied watching him have to follow the rules and be told what to do.
"That's his comeuppance because no one ever told him what to do, probably in his whole life," Daniels told Law&Crime's Jesse Weber.
The adult film actress and director is at the center of Trump's 34-count criminal indictment for allegedly falsifying business records in connection with an alleged $130,000 hush money payment to Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election. Prosecutors in the Manhattan District Attorney's Office presented his case to a grand jury, which had voted in March in favor of the historic indictment.
Daniels told Weber that another part of her felt ambivalent about the news — a reaction that felt unexpected, and even strange, to her.
"All this time I thought that it would feel a certain way, like a relief or a finale or a conclusion," Daniels explained. "It was like having a marathon, you know, episode in the bedroom and not reach a climax. You know, you did all the things: You prepared, you put on the fancy lingerie and lit candles and you went there and there was no conclusion. It just felt like, anticlimactic."
The "Full Disclosure" author said that she also expected a degree of vindication, but that didn't happen.
"I thought when he was indicted and held accountable, that a lot of people would be like, 'Oh, oh, you know, shoot. She was telling the truth, we were wrong about him,'" Daniels said. "But no, it's actually just pissed off people more. They still think that he did no wrong, and even if he did, I should have kept my mouth shut and been a good little girl. And that's upsetting because you have to understand, most of these people attacking me, at least 75 percent are men. And every man out there has at least a mother, a sister, a daughter. How would they feel if a person that they love was treated like I was, or even worse, like Donna Castleberry? And that's the part that I just cannot wrap my head around."
Donna Castleberry is a 23-year-old mother of two and sex worker who was killed by Andrew Mitchell, a former vice unit officer in Columbus, Ohio. On August 23, 2018, Mitchell, acting undercover, arrested Castleberry in a prostitution bust. He didn't have his badge or radio and tried to prove his status with police paperwork. Castleberry allegedly didn't believe Mitchell was an officer — according to a recording on his cellphone, she told him she heard a rumor that a local man was raping sex workers. Castleberry cut Mitchell's hand before trying to flee. He shot her three times.
Mitchell claimed self-defense in his first trial last year, which ended in a mistrial. He stood trial again this month, and on April 18 was acquitted on all murder and manslaughter charges. He still faces federal charges for allegedly forcing women into sex acts to avoid arrest, as well as lying to authorities.
The Ohio vice squad of which Mitchell was a member has since been disbanded, in part to Daniels' insistence on an investigation into its practices. One night in 2018, while she was a feature performer at the Sirens Gentlemen's Club, also in Columbus, she was arrested in part of an unsanctioned raid. Daniels and two other female dancers were charged with touching patrons in violation of a 10-year-old state law called Ohio's Community Defense Act.
"I'm very familiar with the law," Daniels said. "I have danced in Ohio probably more than any other state. Columbus especially, I've been going there for years."
Daniels said she didn't know at the time that the plainclothes couple in the front row of the club were undercover officers.
"They were making out there, kissing, pretending to be very excited by my show," she recalled. "The male was putting dollars in the woman's bra, like between her breasts and in her mouth. And I leaned over and I took the tips and then continued my show with no, no issue."
After the show, Daniels said the officers knocked on the door of her tour bus and told her that she was under arrest. While she noted that a violation of that sort usually results in a $500 fine, there were "tons of police cars, one of the big wagons that they usually haul off like drunk drivers and just making a huge spectacle" of her arrest.
"It's never something that they handcuff you, put you in a van and drive you to the police station, you know, fingerprint use, strip off all your clothes, search you," she said. "They took pictures of my tattoos. They took my diamond earrings — that I did not get back — and put me in a cell."
Daniels says the difference between what normally happens and her arrest was not a coincidence.
"It just seemed really excessive for a nonviolent crime," Daniels continued. "I didn't resist arrest. I was completely respectful, although confused, and I knew that it was wrong at the moment. The whole thing seemed very set up and orchestrated and almost, I would say entrapment."
When she was released the following day, Daniels and her attorney learned that she hadn't in fact broken any laws. A film crew working on her upcoming documentary also caught the whole ordeal.
"It was disgusting and disappointing and honestly quite terrifying," she said. "I was a big enough name and a public figure to be in the news and everywhere at the time that it got a lot of attention. It's just shocking that someone could be so abusive of power."
Daniels filed a civil lawsuit against the City of Columbus and the arresting officers. She claimed that the arrest was an improper investigation and politically motivated setup. She ultimately agreed to a $450,000 settlement and said the court promised that an investigation would continue. While the internal police review did not find that that her arrest was planned ahead or influenced by followers of President Trump — a conclusion Daniels still claims is "inaccurate" — it did lead to the breakup of the vice unit.
"I don't know if it was completely because of me, but I know that I had a big part of it," Daniels said. "They were so terrible and doing so many awful, illegal things that I would hope by now they would have been [disbanded]."
Mitchell — the now-former officer who killed Castleberry — was not involved in Daniels' arrest, but he was found to be another bad seed within the vice unit. Daniels said she found the verdict in his favor "shocking."
"I think that Ms. Castleberry's reaction and behavior was completely justified," Daniels said. "You ask an officer to show you his badge and he doesn't have it. I would have done the same thing, honestly, as she did, in self-defense. She didn't continue to attack. She left the weapon. He was free and clear. He could have run away."
"It was really heartbreaking, and I feel like she didn't she didn't get justice," Daniels added.
Drawing on her own experience, Daniels said that she believes the verdict would have been different had Castleberry not been a sex worker. When Daniels was facing off in court against her former lawyer Michael Avenatti in January 2022, she said her career in adult film was brought up to discredit her.
"And I believe that that absolutely had an impact here, even more so for Ms. Castleberry, because she was not a not a stripper or an actress in adult films. She was an actual prostitute … and had a known addiction. All those things stacked against her," Daniels said. "And I do believe that justice was not served in this case. And two young daughters lost their mom that they will never see again."
Now Daniels is hoping for justice to be served in the case of former President Trump, although she is disheartened about having been ordered to pay $121,000 in legal fees in connection with her failed defamation case against him over a 2018 tweet in which the then-president called her allegation of being threatened to stay quiet about Trump a "total con job."
"This is just another example of gross mishandling of justice," she said of the order. "This is simply about the fact that he put up a tweet calling me a liar, and that is defamation. I think that at the time, the court system had no idea how to handle a sitting president, especially against a porn star, which ties it all back to what we were talking about earlier. They just sort of ignored it. And I refuse to let it go."
In 2018, Trump's former attorney Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to eight counts of financial crimes — including paying Daniels for her silence. The verdict encouraged her to try to take her defamation case to the Supreme Court.
"So if [Cohen] was found guilty of these things I was saying, it was absolutely proven that I was not a liar," Daniels said. "And the fact that they won't even take my case is really heartbreaking because I am an American citizen and I deserve the same treatment as anyone else. And I think that it was a combination of this court system being too afraid to go after a sitting president and too afraid to back a woman and the sex industry. And I lost. I was ordered to pay his court fees."
When it comes to the former president's criminal trial, Daniels said that while she's nervous, she also feels prepared — especially since there isn't actually anything for her to prepare in anticipation of the prosecution's case.
"I'm the only one who hasn't lied, who hasn't changed my story," she said. "And there's a lot of evidence in my favor that hasn't been revealed and it hasn't come out yet. And I'm very excited for the world to know."
"Hopefully justice is served," Daniels added.
As to whether she will take the stand, the woman at the center of the controversy said she hopes to take the oath and tell her story.
"I absolutely do want to testify because I feel like not allowing me to do that discredits me more than anything," she said. "I have tons of evidence to back me up and hopefully this will sort of heal the wounds from not getting justice the first time around with the defamation case."