Stormy Daniels, whose alleged sexual affair with Donald Trump prompted a hush-money scheme at the heart of the criminal case brought by the Manhattan district attorney, described in excruciating detail on Tuesday her encounters with the former US president.
The testimony from Daniels appeared to be embarrassing for Trump, who shook his head at times, and was notably freewheeling – to the extent that the presiding judge sustained multiple objections, even as he denied a mistrial motion on the basis that key parts of her account were prejudicial.
Daniels was wired $130,000 by ex-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen just before the 2016 election to bury her account of the affair. Prosecutors allege Trump later reimbursed Cohen the money but covered up its nature by falsifying business records and in doing so, violated state election laws.
Here are the key takeaways from day 13 of Trump’s criminal trial:
Daniels undercut some Trump defenses
On direct examination, prosecutors used Daniels to undercut some of the Trump defense team’s attempts to distance himself from the hush-money scheme and offer alternative explanations to the jury as to why he pushed for the account of the affair to be buried before the 2016 election.
Trump’s team has suggested, for instance, that the hush-money scheme was to ensure his wife Melania would not be embarrassed.
But prosecutors suggested that could not be entirely true because Daniels recalled that when she met with Trump in his Lake Tahoe hotel room in 2006 and she said Melania was beautiful, Trump allegedly told her not to worry because “we don’t even sleep in the same room.”
Trump’s team has also suggested that Trump might be considered the victim of extortion by Daniels because she was hanging the affair story over his head in the weeks before the 2016 election.
But prosecutors suggested that was not true, by having Daniels testify that she didn’t negotiate for more than the $130,000 in the catch-and-kill because she “didn’t care” about the money – she just wanted it to be over and for her partner to not find out about her alleged affair with Trump.
Daniels also seemed to cast Trump as inherently immoral by testifying that he compared her to his daughter Ivanka – shortly before they allegedly had sex – when he tried to persuade her to appear on The Apprentice. “You remind me of my daughter, she’s blonde and smart and beautiful and people underestimate her as well,” she recalled him saying.
Trump picked at Daniels’ credibility
Daniels appeared to have extraordinary recall about the first time she met Trump in July 2006 and then again in 2007, describing in close detail on direct examination the layout of Trump’s hotel suite – down to the ornate black-and-white floor tiles and how Trump greeted her in silk-satin pyjamas.
But under cross-examination by Trump’s lawyer Susan Necheles, Daniels acknowledged that she had a clear hatred for Trump and suggested she was hoping to get out of having to pay Trump a roughly $250,000 judgement entered against her in federal district court in California.
Necheles also suggested Daniels increasingly included details of the sex with Trump in order to sell her story after first telling it in 2011, and then vacillated between denying and confirming having sex with Trump. The point of the questioning was to undercut her credibility, and suggest she had a propensity to embellish.
Trump motion for mistrial denied
The presiding judge Juan Merchan denied Trump’s motion for a mistrial even as he acknowledged that Daniels was a difficult witness to control and gave freewheeling testimony that included things that would have been better left unsaid.
Trump’s lawyers moved for a mistrial after arguing that Daniels gave testimony that was irrelevant to the falsification of business records charges, such as a power imbalance when they allegedly had sex, and that Trump allegedly did not use a condom.
But the judge ultimately ruled he did not think it warranted a mistrial, for now, and added he was surprised that Trump’s lawyers did not make objections more often, adding that at one point, he had to step in to limit her testimony of his own accord because they had not.
Merchan separately warned Daniels to stay on topic after sustaining a series of objections. “Just listen to the question, and answer the question,” he told her.
