Stormy Daniels appearance stirs things up in Pittsburgh

[Wilhelm]

Joggers stopped to take photos.

Groups of co-workers on their way to happy hours and parking garages pointed and laughed at the flashing red, white and blue digital sign promoting the porn-star-turned-household name.

Commuters waiting at the bus stop along Ninth Street near Penn Avenue doled out mixed opinions — and plenty of jokes — on the featured event about to begin across the street at Blush Gentleman's Club and Sports Bar in downtown Pittsburgh.

Stormy Daniels was in Pittsburgh to put on a strip show.

“Look who's in town, babe,” David Chamberlain, 33, of Trafford teasingly texted his girlfriend, who he says can't stand Daniels.

“I just think it's funny,” said Chamberlain, a cement mason union worker and unabashed Trump supporter.

Chamberlain, who didn't go inside to see Daniels perform, said he doesn't believe President Trump was involved with trying to silence Daniels over an alleged sexual encounter, nor does he think a Trump affiliate threatened her.

“I don't think Trump would take it to that. He don't have to take it to that. He's Donald Trump,” Chamberlain said.

“Trump may given her that money, but then she thought about it and was like, I could triple that money by just coming out with it,” Chamberlain said.

The 39-year-old Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, has evolved this year from an adult entertainer who was relatively unknown to mainstream America, to someone Blush called “the most famous porn star in history” in its promotions.

News of an alleged affair she had with Donald Trump more than a decade ago and allegations that she received $130,000 just before the 2016 election to stay quiet about it made her a household name.

Since details of the alleged affair and cover-up emerged this year, Clifford has filed lawsuits against Trump and his attorney Michael Cohen, and the FBI launched a criminal investigation of Cohen that included raids of his home, hotel room and law offices.

Washington, D.C.-based government watchdog group Common Cause filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission and the Department of Justice alleging Cohen's payment to Clifford was intended to influence the election and should have been reported as a campaign expense, which it wasn't.

Even if Cohen paid Clifford with his own money, as he claims, the payment could constitute a violation because $130,000 would exceed federal contribution limits, said Paul S. Ryan, the group's vice president for policy and litigation.

Ryan said the timing of the payment, about two weeks before the election, suggests the money was intended to influence the election.

“It was all about the election, and it was all about her threat and plan to go public before the election,” he said.

Bradley Smith, the Republican FEC chairman from 2000 to 2005, isn't convinced that argument will hold up in court, making the case that Trump might have paid Clifford the money if she were threatening to go public with the affair whether or not he was campaigning for president.

“The question is not whether you chose to do it for a particular timing; the question is whether you'd have done it or not,” Smith said of the payment to Clifford. “I suspect the election coming up was reason for (Clifford) asking for money. But not necessarily that it was to influence the outcome.”

This week, Clifford filed a defamation lawsuit against Trump over a Twitter post. She released a composite sketch depicting a man she said threatened her in 2011 to stay silent about her alleged affair with Trump.

Afterward, Trump tweeted: “A sketch years later about a nonexistent man. A total con job, playing the Fake News Media for Fools (but they know it)!”

Clifford's lawsuit claims the tweet is “false and defamatory” and accuses her of committing a crime, since making false claims to the police in some states is a crime.

It's unknown what political fallout, if any, there will be from the scandal.

“None of it matters. None of it changes anything,” said Alison Dagnes, professor of political science at Shippensburg University. “It just underlines what people didn't like about him. And if you like him, then it doesn't move the needle at all.”

Dagnes said Clifford has been savvy in her handling of the scandal, staying in the spotlight and speaking for herself when other women involved in affairs with public figures have been silenced or ostracized.

Critics have argued that Clifford, who started her film career in the early 2000s, told her story because she wanted to get rich or boost her career profile.

Her notoriety certainly has increased.

In the five days after The Wall Street Journal broke the story about the alleged $130,000 payment , visitors to the adult website Pornhub searched “Stormy Daniels” more than 2 million times, according to the website . Before that, searches for Daniels averaged about 2,500 a day.

She is now the most popular porn star on Pornhub, according to the website. Since the second week of January, she's been No. 1 every week except for a period in early March when her ranking dropped into the 50s and 60s, Pornhub spokesman Chris Jackson said. Prior to September 2016, months before The Wall Street Journal article broke, Daniels' average weekly ranking was 919th, Jackson said.

Forbes estimated in a report last month that Clifford's annual earnings would likely double this year from an amount in the low six-figure range before the scandal.

The Forbes article quoted one of her booking agents as saying she was “pretty much booked up for the rest of the year” and the rate she could charge had at least doubled from before the scandal.

California-based sociologist Chauntelle Tibbals, whose research focuses on the adult entertainment industry, spent time with Clifford during a three-day, five-show tour stop at a strip club in Houston in early March. Writing about it for Adult Video News, Tibbas reported Daniels told her she made $1,500 per show and $2,000 in tips, excluding her booking agent's 15 percent fee and other costs.

“Her doing feature dance appearances is nothing new, but demand for her has certainly gone up. How much money she made almost seemed like strangely not enough for all the pressure she is going through,” Tibbals said. “She's definitely handling a situation that would certainly be nerve-wracking, stressful and quite frightful probably better than anyone else would.”