Stormy Daniels’ husband says they’ll likely leave country if Trump is acquitted

By Piper Hudspeth Blackburn, CNN

(CNN) — The husband of adult film actress Stormy Daniels said on Tuesday that there’s a “good chance” the couple will leave the country if former President Donald Trump is acquitted in his Manhattan criminal trial.

Barrett Blade spoke to CNN’s Erin Burnett about the vitriol his wife, who is a key figure in the controversy over a 2016 hush money payment allegedly made to Daniels on Trump’s behalf, has faced.

“​​Either way, I don’t think it gets better for her. I think if it’s not guilty, we got to decide what to do. Good chance we’ll probably vacate this country,” Blade said on “OutFront,” adding that if Trump is found guilty, he believed Daniels would still face hate from the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s supporters.

“I don’t see it as a win situation either way,” he said. “I know that we would like to get on with our lives. I know that she wants to move past this. We just want to do what I guess you’d say normal people get to do in some aspects but I don’t know if that ever will be, you know, and it breaks my heart.

Daniels claims she had a one-night stand with Trump in 2006 and was paid off in 2016 to keep silent about the affair. Prosecutors allege that Trump broke the law by falsifying business records to reimburse his former lawyer Michael Cohen and conceal a “hush money” payment made to Daniels on Trump’s behalf. The controversy dates back to January 2018, when the Wall Street Journal reported on the $130,000 payment. Trump has pleaded not guilty and denied the affair.

On the witness stand last week, Daniels described meeting Trump at a celebrity golf tournament, in addition to salacious details of her alleged sexual encounter with him. She also testified about the interest that Trump and Cohen seemed to have had in buying her story after the “Access Hollywood” tape came out just before the 2016 election.

During cross examination, Trump’s lawyers attacked Daniels’ credibility. Attorney Susan Necheles accused her of fabricating the alleged sexual encounter in order to make money. Daniels pushed back and insisted that she was telling the truth.

“If that story was untrue, I would have written it to be a lot better,” Daniels said of her encounter with Trump.

When asked by Burnett about the defense’s claim that Daniels made up her story, Blade echoed his wife’s comments, describing her as “a brilliant writer,” and adding that she would have written something “way better than what she said about the Trump story.”

Blade also noted that Daniels just wants “to get on with her life.”

“As much as it’s boring for the media to keep hearing it over and over again, it sucks for her to have to keep saying the same thing over and over and over again,” Blade said. “It wears on her, but she’s a warrior.”

Blade also said that the hate his wife receives doesn’t really matter to him because Daniels “is used to all of this” and that she was prepared because she continues to receive a lot of vitriol and negative comments on social media.

“This is all her fighting for what she believes is right and telling the truth, and I don’t think a lot of people realize that,” he continued.

CNN’s Shania Shelton, Jeremy Herb, Lauren del Valle and Kara Scannell contributed to this report.

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