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Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, has said in media interviews that she met Trump at a charity golf tournament in July 2006.
She alleged the pair had sex once in his hotel room at Lake Tahoe, a resort area between California and Nevada. Trump’s wife at the time, Melania Trump, was not at the tournament and had just given birth.
In 2016, days before the US presidential election, Daniels said Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen paid her $130,000 (£104,500) in “hush money” to keep her quiet about the affair.
Daniels said she took it because she was concerned for the safety of her family because she was “legally and physically threatened to stay silent”.
In 2011, shortly after she agreed to give an interview to In Touch magazine about the alleged affair, she said an unknown man had approached her and her infant daughter in a Las Vegas car park and told her to “leave Trump alone”.
In 2018, she gave an interview to CBS. Before it was aired, a shell company linked to Cohen threatened Daniels with a $20m lawsuit, arguing she had broken their non-disclosure deal (NDA), or “hush agreement”.
Since the allegations surfaced in 2018, the former president has denied any sexual involvement with Daniels.