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Porn star Stormy Daniels — whose hush money deal with President Donald Trump lead to the prosecution of his ex-personal lawyer Michael Cohen — said Tuesday that she had hired a new attorney of her own, as her combative litigator Michael Avenatti says he was the one who decided to end their business relationship.
Daniels’ new lawyer is Clark Brewster, who is based in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
“I’ve started reviewing these matters about two weeks ago and I will be replacing Mr. Avenatti,” Brewster told CNBC.
Avenatti, who in the past year has gained widespread notoriety for his work for Daniels, told CNBC, “I made the decision to terminate the representation.”
He reiterated that in an email saying, “I terminated the relationship, NOT the other way around.”
The move comes days after a federal judge dismissed Daniels’ lawsuit against Trump and Cohen, seeking to void a non-disclosure agreement barring her from discussing a sexual tryst she allegedly had with Trump in 2006.
The judge tossed the case because Trump and Cohen had agreed not to enforce the deal, for which Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 on the eve of the 2016 presidential election. Trump has denied having sex with Daniels.
On Monday, Brewster and two other lawyers in his firm entered their appearances on Daniels’ behalf in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, where she is appealing the dismissal of a separate libel lawsuit she had filed against Trump.
Daniels’s attorney switcheroo comes four months after she complained that Avenatti had sued Trump for defamation “against my wishes,” and “repeatedly ignored” her requests to give her accounting information about a safety and legal defense fund set up in her name.”
Daniels said just days later that she and Avenatti had “sorted” their issues out, and continued using him as her lawyer.
Avenatti said in his own tweet Tuesday that he had told Daniels in writing on Feb. 19 that “we were terminating our representation of her for various reasons that we cannot disclose due to the attorney-client privilege.”
“This was not a decision we made lightly and it came only after lengthy discussion, thought and deliberation, as well as with consultation with other professionals,” Avenatti wrote on Twitter. “We wish Stormy all the best.”
Avenatti’s representation of Daniels generated widespread media attention in the past year.
Avenatti had replaced Daniels’ first lawyer, Keith Davidson, who had negotiated the deal with Cohen in 2016 to have her refrain from talking publicly about her affair with Trump in exchange for a cash payment.
Cohen later said that deal with Daniels, and another payoff to Playboy model Karen McDougal by the Trump-friendly publisher of The National Enquirer, was designed to avoid having either women’s stories of their alleged affairs with Trump damaging his chances of winning the the presidency.
Cohen has said Trump directed him to facilitate those payments, and showed a congressional committee evidence that Trump, while president, had reimbursed him for the payout to Daniels.
Cohen, 52, pleaded guilty last year to federal campaign finance law violations related to the deals with Daniels and McDougal. He also pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about details of an aborted effort to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, Russia, and to financial crimes.
He is due to begin serving a three-year prison term on May 6.