Rudy Giuliani, the 74-year-old former New York mayor who now serves as Donald Trump’s personal lawyer in the Russia collusion investigation — as well as Trump’s chief personal spokesperson — launched a verbal attack on adult video star Stormy Daniels on Wednesday, saying that he disbelieved her claim to have had a sexual encounter with Donald Trump in 2006 and calling Daniels untrustworthy because “she sells her body,” according to an account reported by CNN .
Giuliani made his comments at the Globes Capital Markets conference held in Tel Aviv, Israel. In the same on-stage interview, Giuliani also claimed that Trump’s wife Melania shares his disbelief of the claim made by Daniels in a lawsuit filed in March — as well as in the media — that she had a consensual sexual encounter with Trump in the summer of 2006.
In a 60 Minutes interview that aired on March 25, Daniels said that the one-time affair occurred at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe, Nevada, in July of 2006, when Trump invited her to his hotel room.
“I excused myself and I went to the restroom. You know, I was in there for a little bit and came out and he was sitting, you know, on the edge of the bed when I walked out, perched. I realized exactly what I’d gotten myself into. And I was like, ‘Ugh, here we go,’” Daniels, 39, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, told the 60 Minutes program.
Giuliani said in an on-stage Israeli interview that Daniels could not be trusted because of her profession.
“I respect women — beautiful women and women with value — but a woman who sells her body for sexual exploitation I don’t respect. Tell me what damage she suffered. Someone who sells his or her body for money has no good name,” Giuliani said, according to a report in Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper. “I don’t believe her. Sue me, but her credibility is like that of a lawyer who gets thrown off a case. As a lawyer, I also got cases that weren’t real.”
The interviewer admonished Giuliani, according to the Mail account, interjecting, “Mister, on this stage, we respect women.”
Daniels’ lawyer, Michael Avenatti, also responded quickly to Giuliani’s remarks, branding the Trump lawyer a “misogynist,” in a post to his Twitter account.
“Mr. Giuliani is a misogynist. His most recent comments regarding my client, who passed a lie detector test and who the American people believe, are disgusting and a disgrace,” Avenatti wrote. “His client Mr. Trump didn’t seem to have any ‘moral’ issues with her and others back in 2006 and beyond.”
Giuliani went on to say that Melania Trump “believes her husband,” according to the CNN account. “She doesn’t think it’s true,” he said, referring to Daniels’ account of her alleged sexual encounter with Trump.
Daniels is suing Trump to be released from a “hush agreement” that she signed in October of 2016, just days before the presidential election that year. She has also filed a defamation suit against him that related to a threat she says was made against her in 2011 by a man who told her to “leave Trump alone. When in April she released a forensic sketch of the man she says threatened her, as the Inquisitr reported, Trump posted a Twitter message calling the sketch a “con job” and saying that the man depicted was “nonexistent.”
Daniels sued on April 30 , saying that Trump had in effect accused her of fabricating the threat story, defaming her by doing so.
In a Quinnipiac poll released on Wednesday, only 29 percent of United States voters said that they had a favorable view of Giuliani, while 49 percent said they viewed Melania Trump in a favorable light.