Stormy Daniels is suing Trump for defamation over a tweet

Trump's tweets have once again landed him in hot water.
 By 
Marcus Gilmer
 on 
Stormy Daniels is suing Trump for defamation over a tweet
Stormy Daniels fights Trump with something Trump loves so dearly: a lawsuit Credit: Getty Images

Donald Trump's Twitter account has, once again, gotten him in some hot water, which should shock absolutely no one.

Trump is facing another Twitter-related lawsuit, but this time it's for defamation and -- in a twist that only the best screenwriter could whip up -- the plaintiff is adult film star Stormy Daniels (whose real name is Stephanie Clifford).

Daniels filed the lawsuit on Monday. It centers on an tweet from April 18 in which Trump addressed her claim she was threatened to stay quiet about her affair with Trump. He specifically called out the sketch of Tom Brady the man who allegedly threatened her as a "con job."

(Just for reference, the other things Trump has referred to by the "con job" label are Jeb Bush and climate change.)

In the complaint, filed in the Southern District of New York, Daniels demands $75,000 and claims Trump's tweet "falsely attacks the veracity of Ms. Clifford's account" of the incident and that the tweet "is false and defamatory."

But the lawsuit also cites Trump's ability to reach millions of people directly via his Twitter account, something Trump himself has bragged about.

"Mr. Trump knows that his personal Twitter account has an audience of over 50 million followers and that the Twitter post would be repeated and reported upon by other news and media outlets online, in print, and on television and radio."

And that, in turn, "exposed Ms. Clifford to hated, contempt, ridicule, and shame, and discouraged others from associating or dealing with her."

Trump has already faced down another lawsuit related to his Twitter use, one that says his blocking of others on Twitter violates the blocked users' First Amendment rights because it prevented them from communicating with the President.

The judge in that case recommended that Trump just mute people in his mentions that he disliked instead of blocking, but, really, Trump would be better off avoiding his mentions altogether because that's the one place on Twitter that's crazier than Trump's tweets.

You can read the complaint filed by Stormy Daniels in full below.

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Marcus Gilmer

Marcus Gilmer is Mashable's Assistant Real-Times News Editor on the West Coast, reporting on breaking news from his location in San Francisco. An Alabama native, Marcus earned his BA from Birmingham-Southern College and his MFA in Communications from the University of New Orleans. Marcus has previously worked for Chicagoist, The A.V. Club, the Chicago Sun-Times and the San Francisco Chronicle.

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