Stormy Daniels and her legal team have settled a previously filed $2 million lawsuit today at the federal courthouse in Columbus.
Daniels settled in a mediation hearing Friday morning for $450,000 with four lawyers by her side.
During the July 11 arrest, Daniels was booked into the Franklin County jail at 4:30 a.m. on three misdemeanor counts of allegedly touching a club patron. She posted a $6,000 bond immediately, and by 6:30 a.m. Columbus criminal defense attorney Chase Mallory had filed his notice to appear as her defense counsel; Mallory had the charges dismissed less than six hours later.
City attorney Zach Klein said the arrest of Daniels was not legal, and that the officers acted without regard of previous directives from his office saying the crime Daniels was charged with is not enforceable. Then-Police Chief Kim Jacobs apologized and called the arrest “a mistake.” Daniels has filed suit in federal court.
The Friday morning hearing is a “mediation” hearing, which is required by the federal court system. In the hearing, Daniels and her four lawyers, Mallory, Dan Sabol, Clark Brewster, and Guy Fortney will meet with the law firm, Crabbe, Brown, and James, who has been hired by the city’s insurance company to defend the suit. The hearing has a magistrate who presides and tries to get the two sides to come to a resolution before trial. Daniels is seeking more than $2 million in damages. Last year, Miranda Panda, of Marion, and Brittany Walters, of Pickerington, sued four VICE officers in October, alleging that they suffered emotional distress when they were charged with Daniels for the same crimes; that suit settled for $150,000.
The FBI has launched a criminal probe into the now defunct-VICE unit, as a result of the Daniels arrest and the murder of a woman who is labeled by law enforcement as a prostitute. In April, VICE officer Andrew Mitchell was indicted on charges of murder and voluntary manslaughter for shooting and killing Donna Castleberry during — what he claimed was — a sex trafficking sting.
A total of five Columbus police officers have been slapped with internal department charges accusing them of violating rules of conduct into the Daniels arrest. Interim Police Chief Tom Quinlan has recommenced the firing of two of those officers from the night of the arrest: VICE supervisor Steve Rosser and lead arresting officer, Whitney Lancaster.
In her suit, attorneys for Daniels – whose real name is Stephanie Clifford – have alleged that her arrest was politically motivated by Republican VICE cops who “entered into a conspiracy to arrest her” after Daniels came forward with allegations in March of 2018 that she had an extramarital affair years ago with Donald Trump. The Guardian’s sister publication, the Advocate, broke the international story last summer that emails from inside CPD show the arrest was pre-planned.
