Stormy Daniels tells Melania to ditch Donald Trump after conviction

Stormy Daniels is encouraging Melania Trump to leave her husband now that the former president is a ‘convicted felon’, it has emerged.

Donald Trump, 77, was found guilty of 34 felony counts over falsifying documents to cover up a payment to silence Daniels ahead of the 2016 election. He has denied any wrongdoing and has vowed to appeal his ‘scam’ conviction.

But now Daniels, who alleged she had an affair with the billionaire just a year after he married Melania, has claimed his wife ‘needs to leave him’ because ‘it’s been proven he is abusive abusive’ and he ‘is now a criminal’.

The adult film star’s remarks come as Trump, in an interview on Fox & Friends, revealed on Sunday that his trial has been ‘very hard’ on Melania.

Melania, throughout her husband’s seven-week trial, remained absent from Trump’s side, which Daniels suspects she did in attempt to protect her son from the ‘dangerous environment’ at the courthouse.  

Daniels on Sunday offered advice to the former First Lady, who kept a stoic appearance throughout her husband’s presidency despite constant speculation about her marriage.

She told The Mirror: ‘I don’t know what their agreement may or may not be, but Melania needs to leave him. Not because of what he did with me or other women but because he is a convicted felon.

‘It’s been proven he is abusive; he was found liable for sexual assault and tax fraud and is now a criminal. He’s neither Teflon Don nor Teflon Con anymore.’ 

She went on to speculate as to why Melania, 54, along with Trump’s eldest daughter Ivanka, were not seen in court.

Daniels believes both women, even if they had wanted to support Trump, likely chose to prioritize the ‘safety and privacy’ of their children over attending the trial.

She added, as a mother herself, if the situation had been reversed, she would gone to great lengths to protect her child ‘even if I wanted to support my spouse or my family member’.

A New York jury on Thursday found Trump guilty of 34 felony charges in a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election through a hush money payment Daniels, who had alleged the two had sex. 

No former president or presumptive party nominee has ever faced a felony conviction or the prospect of prison time.

Trump said on Sunday that he would accept home confinement or jail time after his historic conviction, but that it would be tough for the public to accept.

‘I’m not sure the public would stand for it,’ the Republican presidential candidate told Fox News. ‘I think it’d be tough for the public to take. You know, at a certain point, there’s a breaking point.’

Trump did not elaborate on what he thought might happen if that point is reached. 

But, as he has throughout the trial, the former president maintained his innocence, saying he ‘did absolutely nothing wrong.’

He was asked how his wife, former first lady Melania, has taken the news.

‘She’s fine. But I think it’s very hard for her. I mean, she’s fine. But, you know, she has to read all this c**p,’ he said.

He is scheduled to be sentenced July 11, four days before Republicans gather to formally choose their presidential nominee to face Democratic President Joe Biden in November’s election.

Asked what Trump supporters should do if he were jailed, Republican National Committee Co-Chair Lara Trump told CNN: ‘Well, they’re gonna do what they’ve done from the beginning, which is remain calm and protest at the ballot box on November 5th. There’s nothing to do other than make your voices heard loud and clear and speak out against this.’  

Trump has used his conviction to step up his fundraising efforts but has not otherwise sought to mobilize his supporters.

Some Trump supporters have hung US flags upside down in the wake of the verdict. The inverted flag has been a symbol of distress or protest in America for over 200 years.

The RNC and the Trump campaign raised $70million in the 48 hours after the verdict, Lara Trump said. Asked how much would be used to pay legal fees versus running the campaign, she declined to say.

At least one Democratic lawmaker expressed concern on Sunday about the potential for Trump’s supporters to respond violently to his conviction.

‘His base listens to him. They don’t listen to Lara Trump. And this is another dangerous appeal to violence,’ Democratic US Representative Adam Schiff told CNN.

But US House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Trump ally, said any response must be lawful.

‘We are the rule of law party – chaos is not a conservative value. We have to fight back and we will with everything in our arsenal. But we do that within the confines of the rule of law,’ Johnson told Fox News Sunday.

Trump has vowed to appeal his conviction, but the matter is unlikely to be resolved before the November presidential election, when he will seek to take back the White House from Biden.

Trump attorney Will Scharf told ABC News’ This Week that he does not expect Trump to ‘end up being subject to any sentence whatsoever’ and planned to ultimately take the case to the Supreme Court.

Trump still faces three other criminal cases, including two over alleged efforts to overturn his 2020 loss, although they are not likely to come to trial or conclude before the election. He denies wrongdoing in all the cases and has called the charges a Democratic conspiracy to prevent him from competing.

Biden, meanwhile, has sought to defend the nation’s justice system, saying it is ‘reckless’ and ‘dangerous’ to call the verdict ‘rigged.’ The US Justice Department denies any political interference.

‘There’s one candidate standing up for the rule of law, standing up for our democratic institutions, defending our Constitution, defending our democracy and that’s Joe Biden,’ Biden campaign spokesman Michael Tyler told Fox News. 

After weeks of primarily speaking from an aging courthouse in Manhattan, Trump returned to campaign mode Friday in the atrium of his Trump Tower, the brass and rose marble lobby where he descended his golden escalator to announce his 2016 campaign nine years ago next month. 

Trump initially started attacking Biden on immigration and tax policies before pivoting to his case, growling that he was threatened with jail time if he violated a gag order. 

Speaking to reporters, he argued the verdict in his criminal trial was illegitimate and driven by politics and sought to downplay the facts underlying the case. 

‘It’s not hush money. It’s a nondisclosure agreement. Totally legal, totally common,’ he said.

In a message aimed to galvanize his supporters, he cast himself as a martyr, suggesting that if it could happen to him, ‘They can do this to anyone.’

‘I’m willing to do whatever I have to do to save our country and save our Constitution. I don’t mind,’ he said. ‘So we will continue the fight.’

He also launched into attacks on the judge in his criminal trial and continued to undermine New York’s criminal justice system. 

He branded Judge Juan M Merchan as a ‘tyrant’, claiming he ‘wouldn’t allow us to have witnesses, you wouldn’t allow us to talk, you wouldn’t allow us to do anything.’

‘We’re going to be appealing this scam,’ Trump added. ‘We’re going to be appealing it on many different things.’

He went on to blame Biden for the trial, claiming the Democrat’s administration had been working ‘in conjunction with’ the Department of Justice.

‘This is all done by Biden and his people,’ he said, adding: ‘I am under a gag order from a man who can’t put two sentences together, given by a court.

‘This is done by Washington, and nobody has ever seen anything quite like it.

‘And I am not allowed to talk about it… but you are allowed to talk about it and I hope you do.’

He reiterated that the trial had been ‘rigged’, criticized how his defense’s request for a venue change was refused and alleged that ‘witnesses on our side were literally crucified’.

‘It they can do this to me they can do this to anyone,’ Trump said at the start of his address. ‘These are bad, sick people.’

Although he had appeared tense and deeply angry, his words pointed and clipped, when he emerged from the courtroom immediately after the verdict Thursday, Trump appeared more relaxed during Friday’s address. 

He defaulted into his standard rally mode, complete with acted-out stories and did not take any questions from reporters.

He said that he was ‘honored’ to face trial and said he would continued to fight, despite having been found guilty on all 34 counts against him.

‘We’re going to fight,’ Trump vowed. ‘I’m wired in such a way that a lot of people would have gone away a long time ago.’

He picked apart intricate parts of the case and trial proceedings as unfair, alleging that the $130,000 payment to his former aid Michael Cohen to silence Daniels was a just a ‘legal expense’ and ‘standard stuff’.

‘Hush money, hush money,’ he said. ‘It’s not hush money, it’s a non-disclosure agreement. Totally legal, totally common. Everyone has it.’

Trump said he wanted to testify – a right that he opted not to exercise – and raised the specter of being charged with perjury for a verbal misstep.

He said: ‘The theory is you never testify because as soon as you testify – anybody, if it were George Washington – don’t testify because they’ll get you on something that you said slightly wrong.’

Testing the limits of the gag order that prohibits him from publicly critiquing witnesses including Cohen, Trump called his former fixer, the star prosecution witness in the case, ‘a sleazebag’.

He claimed the prosecution wanted to know if he was ‘a bad boy here, bad boy there’ and argued that Daniels’ ‘salacious’ testimony of their alleged sexual encounter had ‘nothing to do with the case’.

He also circled back to some of the same authoritarian themes he has repeatedly focused on in speeches and rallies, painting the US under Biden as a ‘corrupt’ and ‘fascist’ nation.

He argued that under Biden there were ‘record levels of terrorism pouring into our country’, alleging the so-called terrorists have come into the US with tents, propane tanks, and cell phones.

‘They’ve never seen anything like it,’ he said. ‘It looks like they’re building an army.’

Trump alleged that the ‘great veterans’ living in America are ‘living on the streets like dogs’ while illegal migrants are ‘living in luxury hotels and cities all over our country run by Democrats’.

He added: ‘Our kids can’t have a little league game anymore because we have tents and migrants living on the fields.’ 

He also repeatedly touted an exclusive DailyMail.com poll in his first major speech since his guilty verdict. The poll showed him receiving a six-point boost among voters in the hours after being convicted in his historic hush money trial.

In remarks lasting over 30 minutes Trump said: ‘This is bigger than Trump, and bigger than me, and bigger than my presidency.

‘And the people understand it because I just see a poll came out – The Daily Mail. The first one came out, done last night right after the verdict, where I’m up six points.

‘Six points from what we already were. We were leading fairly substantially. We’re up six points in the Daily Mail poll.’

His son Eric Trump and daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, joined him, but his wife, Melania Trump, who has been publicly silent since the verdict, was not seen.

Outside, on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, supporters gathered across the street flew a giant red ‘TRUMP OR DEATH’ sign that flapped in front of a high-end boutique. 

A small group of protesters held up signs that said ‘Guilty’ and ‘Justice matters.’