After watching her interview on "60 Minutes" in March, Stormy Daniels looked down at her phone. She had received about a hundred messages since she alleged on the program that she and her daughter had been threatened by an unknown man in a Las Vegas parking lot.
"Your child should be euthanized," one message read, "because she would be better off than with you."
She asked a friend watching the episode with her to record a statement on his phone. When he turned on his camera, Daniels rattled off a list of parting words and wishes, sketching an impromptu last will and testament.
"I had lived alone with the fear of being murdered to ensure my silence for so long that now that the world was discussing the death threats against me, I felt like I finally had some company in my concern," Daniels writes in "Full Disclosure," the adult film star and director's new memoir.
The book, set for release on Oct. 2 by St. Martin's Press, traces the author's life from a tumultuous childhood in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, through her rise to the forefront of American politics in 2018. Daniels' firsthand account reveals the anxiety and fear she encountered along the path toward challenging a U.S. president in court.
Daniels had dipped her toe into politics before, teasing a run in Louisiana against Republican incumbent Sen. David Vitter in the 2010 campaign. ("I am not running for the U.S. Senate for the same reason that so many dedicated patriots do not run — I can't afford it," she said at the time.)
But she became a national fixation after The Wall Street Journal first reported in January that the president's then-lawyer, Michael Cohen, had paid $130,000 in a hush-money deal barring Daniels from discussing an alleged affair with Trump years before he became president.
Daniels is now suing Trump and Cohen to void the nondisclosure pact, which she and her lawyer, Michael Avenatti, argue had been invalid from the beginning because Trump himself never signed it.
The alleged dalliance prompted questions about Trump's campaign expenditures, as well as the character of the president, whose wife, Melania Trump, had given birth to Trump's youngest son a few months earlier in 2006.
It also established Avenatti as one of Trump's most vocal and persistent critics. The media-friendly attorney has recently represented alleged victims of Attorney General Jeff Sessions' family separation policy, as well as a woman who made shocking allegations of past sexual misconduct against Trump's Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh.
Avenatti now says he is "exploring" a presidential run against Trump in 2020.
Before and after Trump
Daniels, born Stephanie Clifford, is now nationally known for her alleged tryst with Trump, and the ensuing fallout from the allegation. But her recollections of childhood and her career arc into porn stardom receive just as much attention throughout the 268-page hardcover.
She writes that she had been sexually abused for two years by a friend's father when she was nine years old. She goes on to recount salacious anecdotes from her time stripping at "Cinnamon's," her entree into the adult industry described as "basically, a trailer."
Daniels says she first met Trump while working a promotional gig for an adult entertainment company at a Lake Tahoe celebrity golf tournament in July 2006. Trump, through his bodyguard Keith Schiller, invited Daniels to the penthouse of a Harrah's casino, she writes. The book then goes into granular detail about her alleged sexual encounter with Trump.
While Daniels said she and Trump never had sex a second time, she writes about multiple subsequent meetings where Trump floated the possibility of Daniels becoming a contestant on Trump's reality show at the time, "The Apprentice."
In July 2007, Daniels said she met Trump in Beverly Hills, where they watched "Shark Week" on television — even though Trump apparently considers sharks "disgusting creatures." While hate-watching the sharks, Daniels writes that Trump received a call from Hillary Clinton, who at the time was seeking the Democratic Party's nomination for president against Barack Obama.
"I love her," Trump said, according to Daniels. "She is so smart." Daniels writes that he also told her that he had been asked to run for president himself, but he responded, "Who would want to? This is way more fun."
Less than a decade later, Trump would defeat Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.
Trump has called Daniels' claim that they had sex "false and extortionist." But he also admitted paying Cohen a monthly retainer as part of the $130,000 hush agreement, which Cohen offered after learning that Daniels had planned to speak about the tryst on "Good Morning America" shortly before the election.
In August, Cohen pleaded guilty to eight criminal counts, which included campaign finance violations. In remarks before a federal judge in New York, Cohen said he made payments to two women at the direction of an unidentified candidate for federal political office, intended to influence the outcome of the election.
Cohen's lawyer, Lanny Davis, said shortly after that "Donald Trump directed [Cohen] to commit a crime by making payments to two women for the principal purpose of influencing an election."
The White House did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment on Daniels' claims in the memoir.
At the time of the book's publication, Avenatti was leading his latest crusade against Trump — this time as a lawyer for Julie Swetnick, who alleged that she witnessed Supreme Court hopeful Brett Kavanaugh and others spiking drinks at parties when they were teenagers in order to make it easier for girls to be raped.
Kavanaugh unequivocally denied the allegation, calling it "from the Twilight Zone." Allegations of sexual misconduct are now being investigated by the FBI, although it is unclear whether Swetnick's allegations will be included in the probe.
Avenatti still represents Daniels in the lawsuit against Trump and Cohen, even after lawyers for the two men said they would accept the invalidation of the hush deal Daniels signed.