Stormy Daniels' Lawsuit Against Trump Is Moving From New York To LA — Here's Why

Lawyers for the president have requested to move Stormy Daniels' lawsuit against Trump to LA, as of Aug. 8, and Daniels and her lawyer, Michael Avenatti, have agreed to the move. The move from New York to Los Angeles is happening for one main reason: it will hopefully make the entire process happen much more quickly. In fact, the move seems to be the first thing that both sides have agreed upon since their public dispute began.

The specific lawsuit that's moving to LA is a claim by Daniels that Trump defamed her on Twitter by undermining her claims that a man had threatened her to keep quiet about her past supposed relationship with Trump. As for Trump, he has consistently denied any relationship with Daniels or any knowledge of a man threatening Daniels. The tweet in question that Daniels is suing Trump over was posted on April 18, 2018. The president tweeted, "A sketch years later about a nonexistent man. A total con job, playing the Fake News Media for Fools (but they know it)!"

Now, Daniels' lawsuit aims to prove that Trump's tweet was an act of defamation. Daniels' lawyer, Michael Avenatti, said of moving the lawsuit to LA, "We concluded that it will allow the defamation case against Mr. Trump to move along more expeditiously if it is venued in Los Angeles. It is all about getting maximum accountability as quickly as possible."

When asked why lawyers on Trump's side would be okay with moving the lawsuit to Los Angeles, Avenatti joked to reporters, "Maybe he likes the weather or his golf course better."

Daniels' team released a composite sketch of the man that she claimed threatened her in 2011 when she was trying to sell her story about her supposed affair with Trump.

In a CBS interview, Daniels said that she was in a parking lot with her infant daughter when a man walked up to her and said, "Leave Trump alone. Forget the story."

In an interview with Anderson Cooper, Avenatti repeatedly called Trump's then-lawyer Michael Cohen (who's now embroiled in a Daniels-Trump lawsuit of his own) a "thug." Avenatti added that he was "not yet" accusing Cohen of having sent someone to threaten Daniels, but that "there's only three groups of people that individual could have been sent by."

"We know it's not my client that sent the goon," Cohen said, "We know it's not the magazine that sent the goon. There's only one logical place left as to who would have sent the goon. It's common sense."

As for Cohen, he continued to maintain that Daniels' claim of being threatened was a "complete lie."

"It's an utter fiction," Cohen's lawyer, David Schwartz said, though he was not representing Cohen in this case. "And that in and of itself is defamatory to say that was Michael Cohen or someone sent by Michael Cohen. ... It's a figment of her imagination. That person doesn't exist."

More recently, Daniels was arrested during one of her strip performances at a club in Ohio. Following the arrest, Avenatti maintained that it was assuredly "politically motivated."

"In America, we should not be using the power of the badge to arrest our political enemies," Cohen said. "They do that in Russia, but they don't do that in the United States of America."