LAS VEGAS — Adult-film actress Jessica Drake made it clear that she did not plan to use her appearance at a four-day porn industry convention here to discuss her alleged encounter with Donald Trump in 2006.

“I’ll talk when I’m ready to talk or when I’m subpoenaed,” said Drake, who moderated a discussion Thursday about an academic book on women’s sex toys during the annual AVN Adult Entertainment Expo.

But the mere presence of Drake and Stormy Daniels, another porn star with an alleged connection to the president who was set to attend the event, brought added frisson to this year’s festival of all things pornographic.

“Any exposure is good exposure,” said Bree Mills, an entrepreneur who launched her own all-female studio, Girlsway, several years ago. Mills said she welcomed mainstream attention to an industry that she says is evolving to produce work that is “no longer something men in trench coats feel they have to hide from their wives.”

Jessica Drake, whose real name is Angela Patrice Heaslet, alleged in the fall of 2016 that President Trump hugged and kissed her without her consent at a 2006 charity golf tournament.

A year ago, many in the industry were bracing for a crackdown from the Trump administration and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who had promised to “vigorously” uphold adult obscenity laws and said he would consider reviving a special unit to prosecute such cases.

Instead, Trump’s biggest impact at the annual porn convention at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino was to put a brighter spotlight on Daniels and Drake, who had both been nominated for honors Saturday night in a red-carpet awards ceremony regarded as the Oscars of erotica.

“Any questions about 45 have to go to her lawyer,” said Drake’s publicist Adella Curry, referring to the 45th president.

Adult-film executives said they welcomed the spike in interest as the industry works to climb back from the Great Recession and fight off DVD piracy, which has cut into a key revenue stream. AVN chief executive Tony Rios said that he expected 35,000 people to attend the Las Vegas expo – the largest turnout in the past six years. The increase, he said, comes as the industry is shifting from major studio productions to online subscription models.

What many see as the future of porn was on display during the event, where a new generation of social media savvy “cam girls” clad in pasties, leather straps and bow ties pouted and gyrated in front of laptops on the expo floor, demonstrating how they engage with online audiences directly from their homes.

Fans – more than 80 percent are male, according to a recent survey – jostled for position to shoot selfies with women they knew from internet chat rooms.

Evelin Stone, 24, a former nursing student, said she had come to the event for the first time to sign autographs for men who had watched her from their mobile phones and home computers.

“It’s nerve-racking,” Stone said of meeting her fans in person, “because you don’t know what they will do.”

There are rules: Attendees had to sign a code of conduct that prohibited stalking and unwanted physical contact.

A contingent of feminist porn stars on hand at the event argued that sex work is empowering – an equalizer at a time when women’s salaries in most industries lag behind their male counterparts, according to performer Siouxsie Q.

“It’s one of the few jobs that will allow me to make more money than a man,” she said.

Drake used her appearance to criticize the “shame-centered” abstinence-only education she says she was raised with as a Jehovah’s Witness.

“Sex education sucks,” said Drake, who also works as a sex educator.

Drake, whose real name is Angela Patrice Heaslet, alleged in the fall of 2016 that Trump hugged and kissed her without her consent at a 2006 charity golf tournament. She was among about a dozen women who came forward late in the 2016 campaign to say that the Republican candidate touched them inappropriately.

At the same 2006 golf tournament, Daniels – whose real name is Stephanie Clifford – claimed she had an affair with Trump, according to a recently published interview that she gave to In Touch Weekly in 2011. The Wall Street Journal reported this month that Daniels received $130,000 days before the 2016 election as part of a payment arranged by a Trump attorney.

Trump denied the accusations made against him shortly before the election, calling the women “liars.” The White House official dismissed Daniels’s account as “old, recycled reports, which were published and strongly denied prior to the election.” Trump lawyer Michael Cohen released a statement signed by Daniels denying an affair and calling reports of a payment “completely false.”

Daniels, who has declined to comment, is now enjoying newfound attention. Earlier this month, she kicked off a “Making America Horny Again” tour at a South Carolina strip club. She is booked to appear Tuesday on ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” following Trump’s State of the Union address.

For her part, fellow porn star Alana Evans, who said she was a friend of Daniels, had her own plans for making the most of the controversy: She spiced up her expo act by bringing in a male performer who specializes in spanking to impersonate the president.

“Donald Trump isn’t our country,” said Evans, eyeing her black leather boots as she considered how she would tackle him.

Trump’s history suggests he could have been an ally of the porn industry.

As a New York developer, he posed in a white dress shirt and bow tie for the March 1990 Playboy cover alongside a woman wrapped in little more than his tuxedo jacket. He made a cameo appearance in a soft-core porn movie. He rewarded contestants from Season 6 of his reality TV show, “The Apprentice,” with a pool party at Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Mansion.

“I do not believe in tearing Trump down for something I am in support of,” said porn actor Michael Vegas, though he said he is no fan of the Republican president.

But few at the expo said they believe the Trump administration will be good for their long-term interests.

As a candidate in 2016, Trump signed an anti-porn pledge from the nonprofit group Enough is Enough, which seeks to protect children on the internet. The 2016 platform of the Republican Party labeled internet porn a “public health crisis” – a designation decried by performers at the Vegas convention.

“What public health crisis?” asked veteran porn star Nina Hartley. “We are role modeling excellent behavior,” she said, describing the health screenings that she said she and other performers routinely undergo.

At a Thursday afternoon panel titled “Law and Disorder: What’s Ahead in 2018” a team of lawyers assessed how the current political climate might affect the porn industry.

“This industry is more than a business – it’s a family, a community,” said Eric Paul Leue, who heads pornography’s trade organization, the Free Speech Coalition. Allan Gelbard, a First Amendment expert, warned that the administration might take action against porn to boost support of Trump’s evangelical base.

“You need to assume the obscenity laws will be enforced somewhere, sometime,” said Clyde DeWitt, a longtime legal adviser to the industry.

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