Stormy Daniels, the buxom blonde bombshell of the blue-movie trade, was collared in Columbus, Ohio, on Wednesday after some monkeyshines with undercover cops at a strip club. Daniels posted $6,054 bail, but the city attorney quickly dropped the charges.
Daniels’ attorney, Michael Avenatti, said the arrest was a political sting operation, suggesting the charges against Daniels were trumped up because Daniels disclosed an affair with the president and subsequent pay-off to keep quiet about it. The president denies Daniels’ allegation.
Responding to the charges on Twitter, Avenatti wrote that Daniels was arrested while “performing the same act she has performed across the nation at nearly a hundred strip clubs. This was a setup & politically motivated. It reeks of desperation. We will fight all bogus charges.”
That won’t be necessary.
Illegal Fondling Alleged
Stormy’s rough weather began during her performance at 11:30 p.m., when the vice-squad’s gumshoes showed up at the club, called Sirens, to investigate drug dealing and prostitution.
According to the Washington Post, audience members were tossing dollar bills at the porn queen. Then the topless Daniels began “forcing the faces of the patrons into her chest and using her bare breasts to smack the patrons,” the report states. Police also accuse her of fondling women in the club.
Two police detectives and an officer in the club noticed what Daniels was doing and approached the stage. As she performed in front of a female detective, the report states, Daniels leaned over, grabbed the detective’s head and “began smacking her face with her bare breasts and holding her face between her breasts against her chest.”
She allegedly performed the same acts on a male detective and a third officer, according to the report, and began “fondling” that officer’s buttock and breasts.
Another police detective, who was standing near the bar area, saw it all happen, according to the police report. That detective then left the club to request help from patrol in arresting Daniels and two others, who were identified in the report as a dancer and a server.
Daniels was arrested for violating a law in Ohio that forbids customers at strip clubs from touching dancers. The law, which excludes members of a dancer’s immediate family, has rarely if ever been enforced since it passed in 2007, the Columbus Dispatch reported last year.
No Violation
City attorney Zach Klein dropped the charges after determining Daniels really didn’t break the law.
“My office has reviewed the charges filed by the Columbus Division of Police, and I’ve determined that these crimes were not committed, based on the fact that Ms. Clifford has not made regular appearances at this establishment as required under the law,” Klein said.
For his part, Daniels’ attorney, Avenatti, has suggested he might run for president against Donald Trump, a fantasy on the order of those entertained by men who imagine themselves in an assignation with his client.
Not Her First Arrest
This is not the first arrest for Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford. On July 26, 2009, police in Tampa Bay, Florida, locked her up for battering her husband. Daniels was “upset because the way the laundry had been done,” the Smoking Gun reported at the time.
Daniels hurled a potted plant at the man. Daniels paid $1,000 bail.
At the time, she was contemplating a run for Senate against the GOP’s David Vitter in Louisiana because Vitter was caught patronizing a prostitution ring. Daniels was enraged at Vitter’s hypocrisy, she said.
Her campaign slogan was “Screwing People Honestly,” and unlike Vitter, she told Marie Claire, she didn’t have to worry about getting caught in an illicit sex act because “I have nothing to hide. A sex tape of me isn’t going to pop up and shame me. There are 150 of them at the video store.”
Daniels ended her campaign because she was the “target of the cynical stalwarts of the status quo.”
“Simply because I did not fit in their mold of what an independent working woman should be,” she said, “the media and political elite have sought to relegate my sense of civic responsibility to mere sideshow antics.”
Daniels was a lifelong Democrat, CBS reported, who switched parties because she appreciated Republican economic policies “after learning the Republican National Committee reimbursed an outing at a topless, bondage-themed nightclub” called Voyeur. “A mere $1,900 outlay at a club with the reputation of Voyeur is a clear indication of a frugal investment with a keen eye toward maximum return.”
Photo: AP Images
