Stormy Daniels, the pornographic film actress at the center of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg‘s prosecution against former President Donald Trump, is emblematic of the stereotypes attached to her industry. A lengthy biographical sketch published in New York Magazine‘s Intelligencer reveals a woman motivated by a need for constant attention, greed, petty vindictiveness, and — by her own admission — mental illness.

In her own words, Daniels contradicts her recollection of events surrounding her alleged affair with former President Trump. She plays up fictitious threats and carefully assumes the role of someone who faced grave injustice — despite no crime ever being committed against her. The National Pulse has pulled some of the more relevant passages that shed important light on the motivations and dubious credibility of Stormy Daniels.

“I’M SIGNIFICANTLY MORE CRAZY.”

In a 2023 interview, shortly after former President Trump was charged with falsifying business records to cover up alleged “hush money” payments to Daniels just days before the 2016 election, the porn actress acknowledged that her mental health had declined. “I’m significantly more crazy now than I was before,” Daniels said.

The adult film industry has been accused of routinely taking advantage of women with untreated mental health issues. A 2011 psychiatric study comparing women in the porn industry with the average woman in California found a stark deviation in mental health. One-third of respondents in the adult film industry met the criteria for a depression diagnosis. Just 13 percent of women in California met the same criteria overall. Additionally, women in the porn industry were by and large more likely to have experienced poverty, sexual abuse, and other forms of violence than the average woman in California.

“MAKE SOME MONEY.”

Former President Trump and his allies have long contended that Daniels had engaged in a celebrity extortion plot as she saw an opportunity for a financial windfall with his presidential campaign. Daniels admits as much in her court testimony, confirming to Trump’s defense attorney, Susan Necheles, that she was motivated to “Get the story out and make some money.”

The National Pulse has reported that Daniels’s original attorney, Keith Davidson — who negotiated the alleged hush money payment with disgraced lawyer Michael Cohen — is a well-known entertainment industry shakedown artist. Davidson has represented several unsavory characters who’ve peddled sex tapes and lurid stories of celebrity trysts, all to make a buck. In 2018, Davidson was fighting at least three lawsuits against him over alleged extortion plots.

CHANGING HER STORY. 

Daniels’s recollection of events has changed over time. The newest iteration, as The National Pulse reported on Tuesday, suggests her encounter with the former President was nonconsensual, with Daniels telling the court that Trump was bigger than her and alluding to the power dynamic between the two. However, prior tellings paint a very different picture.

The porn actress claimed in the past that she was the aggressor. New York Magazine notes: “[S]he recounts details about insulting him, or making him change out of his pajamas, or instructing him to bend over so she could spank him… she had thought of her standoff with Trump as a battle of egos between two equals, and she had felt that she had won.”

A VICTIM WITHOUT A CRIME.

One of the most bizarre aspects of Stormy Daniels’s public persona has been her insistence she’s the victim of grave injustice. “Her mind-set is that this is a justice system that hasn’t protected her, and yet she’s here spending her money, her own time, and taking time off work and risking her safety to show up for a legal system that didn’t show up for her,” a friend of the adult film actress told New York Magainze. Daniels has foregone government-provided security and relied instead on her long-time bodyguard, claiming she doesn’t trust the government to protect her — what she needs protection from isn’t clear.

This victim mentality played out during Tuesday’s cross-examination of Daniels by Trump’s defense attorneys. “He prevailed, but I was not found to have lost,” the porn actress insisted when asked why she still has not paid Trump legal fees as part of a judgment against her over several failed lawsuits against the former President.

The closest Daniels has ever come to actually detailing a crime against her was a claim she made on the witness stand Tuesday that she was approached by a man in a parking garage in 2011 and told to stop discussing her story. By her admission, Daniels never told her husband, daughter, or anyone else of the alleged threatening encounter. Nor did she report the threat to police.