In New York, Stormy Daniels testified at a trial about hush money paid to keep her silent about a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006, with Trump present in the courtroom.
Jurors were very interested as Daniels gave a detailed and sometimes explicit account of the encounter Trump denies. Trump looked straight ahead when Daniels came in, later talking quietly to his lawyers and shaking his head as she testified.
It was the main spectacle in a trial that has gone back and forth between tabloid-like elements and dry details. The appearance of a porn actor who says she had an intimate encounter with a former president added to the historic firsts in a case with claims of sex, payments, and cover-ups, taking place as the presumed Republican nominee runs for president again.
Despite objections from defense lawyers, Daniels shared sensational details. The lawyers demanded a mistrial, arguing that her comments were unfair and irrelevant.
Attorney Todd Blanche said, “This testimony makes it impossible to recover from. How can we recover in a way that’s fair to President Trump?”
The judge refused the request and said defense lawyers should have objected more during the testimony. Later, Trump's team used their chance to question Daniels to portray her as having personal animosity and profiting from her claims against Trump.
Defense lawyer Susan Necheles asked Daniels, “Do you hate President Trump?”
“Yes,” Daniels admitted.
Daniels’ statements are crucial to the case because in the final weeks of Trump’s 2016 campaign, his lawyer Michael Cohen paid her $130,000 to keep quiet about what she says was a surprising and uncomfortable sexual encounter with Trump in 2006 at a celebrity golf event in Lake Tahoe. Trump has pleaded not guilty.
A vocal Trump opponent
Under a prosecutor’s questioning, Daniels described how a meeting at a golf tournament, where they talked about the adult film industry, turned into a “brief” sexual encounter that Trump initiated after inviting her to dinner and back to his hotel suite.
She said she didn’t feel physically or verbally threatened, but she knew his bodyguard was outside the suite. She also felt there was a power imbalance: Trump “was bigger and blocking the way,” she said.
At the time, Trump was married to his wife, Melania, who was not present at the trial. Daniels said Trump told her they did not sleep in the same room, and he shook his head at the defense table.
Afterward, Daniels said, “It was really hard to get my shoes because my hands were shaking so hard.”
“He said, ‘Oh, it was great. Let’s get together again, honey bunch,’” Daniels said. “I just wanted to leave.”
Since the encounter became public, Daniels has become a vocal Trump opponent, sharing her story many times and criticizing the former president. But Tuesday's testimony, where she faced Trump in court and described her experiences, was unprecedented, as the jury considered convicting a former president for the first time.
‘What could possibly go wrong?’
She told jurors about meeting Trump through the adult film studio she worked for, which sponsored a hole on the golf course. They had a brief conversation about the adult film industry and her directing abilities. Trump called her 'the smart one' for making films, Daniels recalled.
Later, in the “gift room,” Trump remembered her as “the smart one” and asked her to dinner, Daniels said.
Her then-publicist suggested that Trump’s invitation was a good excuse to skip a work dinner and would “make a great story” and perhaps help her career.
“What could possibly go wrong?” she recalled the publicist saying.
They saw each other periodically over the years, and she said she rejected Trump’s advances.
In 2011, she learned from her agent that the story of her encounter with Trump had made its way to a magazine.
She agreed to an interview for $15,000 because “I’d rather make the money than somebody make money off of me, and at least I could control the narrative.” The story never ran, but later that year, an item turned up on a website.
‘My motivation wasn’t money’
She testified that she was in good financial shape when she authorized her manager to shop her story during the 2016 presidential campaign.
She said she had no intent of approaching Cohen or Trump to have them pay her.
“My motivation wasn’t money,” she said. “It was to get the story out,” she testified.
But Necheles focused on the fact that she owes Trump hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees from an unsuccessful defamation lawsuit and that she tweeted in 2022 that she “will go to jail before I pay a penny.”
“That was me saying, ‘I will not pay for telling the truth,’” Daniels testified Tuesday.
She later firmly denied that she was trying to squeeze Trump for money.
“You were looking to extort money from President Trump,” Necheles said.
“False,” Daniels responded.
“Well, that’s what you did,” the lawyer said.
“False,” Daniels answered.
Daniels is expected to return to the witness stand Thursday, when the trial resumes.
Prosecutors are building toward their star witness, Cohen, who pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the hush money payments.
Trump is accused of 34 felony charges of changing business records in relation to the payments. This is the initial trial of his four criminal cases to go to a jury.
