“Porn Star Becomes Latest Trump Accuser — Day After Launching Online Sex Store” concerns Jessica Drake, a woman whose job was having sex for money, purportedly receiving an offer back in 2005 to have sex for money ($10,000). The story has become more newsworthy than you might expect (e.g., in the Boston Globe) because Donald Trump was allegedly one of the people who offered to pay her for having sex in 2005. At least 10 of my Facebook friends have linked to stories about Ms. Drake (though none have offered their opinion regarding the quality of her acting or where her films fit into the history of American cinema).
I don’t presume to know the truth of events that occurred in private 11 years ago, and I was not previously acquainted with this young star or her work, but let’s look at whether the $10,000 would have been fair compensation.
How much could Ms. Drake have gotten paid for having sex with Trump under the California Child Support guidelines? Forbes says that Trump is worth $3.7 billion (source). His tax returns are likely complex, but family court judges are encouraged to ignore reported income when a self-employed defendant is sued and are especially encouraged to ignore IRS-allowed deductions such as for depreciation. Assume that Ms. Drake persuades a family court to impute a 5 percent return on investment to Mr. Trump. His imputed income would then be $185 million per year or $15,416,667 per month. If we assume that Ms. Drake became pregnant with just one fetus, rather than twins, she would be entitled to $847,712 per month in tax-free child support ($183,105,792 over 18 years). That’s assuming that she took care of the child 100 percent of the time.
What if Ms. Drake felt that a child in her life would be an impediment to her career in the adult film industry? In jurisdictions such as California where child support is unlimited it is reasonably common for women, represented by attorneys, to market abortions at a discount to the net present value of the child support that would be owed if the baby were carried to term (see “Child Support Litigation without a Marriage”). With $183 million on the table as a starting number, $50 million in immediate cash after three months of pregnancy and a Non-Invasive Prenatal Paternity test does not seem like an unreasonable estimate.
[Note that the purported offer was made in the Lake Tahoe region. The above analysis assumes that Ms. Drake would have been smart enough not to have sex in Nevada and thus open the door to venue litigation. Under Nevada family law, the child would have had a cash value of only about $13,000 per year times 18 years = $234,000.]
[And what if Ms. Drake had been blessed with twins following a one-night sexual encounter? The cashflow generated by two children would be $1,356,339 per month under the California guidelines. That’s $292,969,224 ($293 million) over 18 years.]
Related:
In pursuit of social justice, the bigger question we should be asking is how much can The Donald sue Ms Drake for if her allegations are true. If a baker in Oregon must pay $135k for refusing to bake a cake for a gay couple, then surely a porn star must pay millions$ for refusing to provide sex to a republican billionaire?
@billg Wasn’t Trump a registered Democrat back in 2005?
According to the EEOC, it is illegal to discriminate on any of the following grounds: Age, Disability, Genetic Information, National Origin, Pregnancy, Race/Color, Religion or Sex (whatever that means these days). It would seem that discrimination on the grounds of political affiliation and/or billionaire status (real or merely alleged) is not prohibited by law.