Judge indicates he is likely to dismiss porn star’s lawsuit against Trump

Forecasting the dismissal of Stormy Daniels' defamation claims, a federal judge said Donald J. Trump is entitled to an opinion -- whether he's president or not.

Though he stopped short of a tentative opinion Monday, U.S. District Judge S. James Otero seemed to give Trump and his legal team good reason to be confident the case against him -- brought over an allegedly defamatory tweet from Trump -- would soon be dismissed on anti-SLAPP grounds.

Attorneys for Daniels, a porn actress whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, argued the case should be allowed to continue because courts in New York -- from where the case was transferred and where Trump declares residency -- apply anti-SLAPP protections too narrowly for Trump to hide behind.

But Trump counsel Charles Harder of Harder LLP said the courts should look instead to Clifford's home state of Texas, which has upheld incredibly broad anti-SLAPP protections modeled after the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Acknowledging the strategic motivations behind their respective positions, Otero said Trump seemed to have the right of it. Clifford's attorneys Michael Avenatti and Ahmed Ibraham quickly ceded the point, prompting Otero to remark "this is becoming an easy hearing."

With scales appearing to tip in Trump's favor, the typically hands-on Avenatti largely deferred his responses to Ibraham.

Ibrahim argued Daniels should at the very least be allowed to move to discovery on her defamation claims to prove Trump's motivations behind the tweet, in which he called Clifford's story of being threatened into silence about their alleged affair by a purported Trump associate in 2011 "a total con job."

Ibrahim said discovery was necessary to show whether Trump was knowingly lying while undermining Daniels' account of events and whether there was actual malice behind the tweet. But Otero seemed unconvinced, telling Ibraham that allowing the case to move forward would potentially have a profound chilling effect on the office of the President and political candidates at large.

"I'm troubled that there's a claim for defamation in the first instance," Otero said.

After Otero expressed a clear intention to find in Trump's favor, Avenatti took to the lectern to argue in favor of an opportunity to amend Daniels' complaint should it be dismissed. Avenatti said he would amend the complaint to "sure up" Daniels' actual malice claims, in particular. Stephanie Clifford v. Donald J. Trump, 18-cv-02217(C.D. Cal., filed March 8, 2018).

The dismissal of the case could mean one less thread in the multi-pronged legal fight between Trump and Clifford consolidated to Otero's courtroom, including a contract breach dispute over the enforceability of a non-disclosure agreement between the two. That case may similarly be poised to end now that Trump has ceded the enforceability of the NDA and called for the case's dismissal.

Contrary to rumblings on the internet, Otero said he was more than happy to have the cases in his courtroom. Referencing bloggers who opined Otero must "have run over a nun in a past life" to earn the cases as punishment, Otero said he was more than happy to take up an interesting First Amendment case.

As "a product of Catholic school," Otero joked that he wouldn't run over a nun.