The president, the porn star and the payment: Stormy Daniels testifies in Trump’s hush money trial
By Farrah Tomazin
US porn star Stormy Daniels has told a jury, in explicit detail, about her alleged sexual encounter with Donald Trump and the intimidation she faced by people trying to stop the tryst from becoming public.
In another astonishing moment ahead of this year’s presidential election, Daniels testified for the first time in Trump’s hush money trial about the night she says she had sex with him, recounting how she accepted a request to meet him at his hotel room, spanked him “on the butt” with a rolled-up magazine, and even asked about his wife Melania.
Donald Trump returns to the courtroom following a lunch break in his trial; Stormy Daniels in January of this year.Credit: AP, Getty Images
“We don’t even sleep in the same room,” she said Trump told her that night in 2006.
The evidence emerged on the fourth week of the former president’s historic trial, in which he stands accused of falsifying business records to cover up his alleged encounter with Daniels in the lead up to the 2016 election.
Trump, who has denied both the affair and that he fraudulently paid to silence it, looked increasingly irritated during the testimony, occasionally shaking his head and passing notes to his lawyers as they prepared for their cross-examination.
Donald Trump and Stormy Daniels in 2006. He was 60, she was 27. He is accused of falsifying business records to hide a hush-money payment to her.Credit: MySpace.com/StormyDaniels
His son Eric, the only family member who has been in court to support him so far, sat stone-faced in the public gallery.
Under questioning by prosecutor Susan Hoffinger, Daniels told the jury in vivid detail about how she met Trump during a golf tournament in Lake Tahoe. She was a 27-year-old adult film actress, he was 60 at the time and at the height of his career as a reality TV star hosting the NBC hit The Apprentice.
She claims she agreed to meet Trump for what she thought would be a dinner, but when she got to his hotel, his security guard told her Trump would meet her in his suite, where he greeted her wearing satin pyjamas.
“I said, ‘Does Hugh Hefner know you stole his pyjamas?’ ” Daniels recalled, referring to the trademark outfits of Playboy boss Hugh Hefner.
Daniels, now 45, told the court that she found Trump to be “pompous” and “arrogant” that night, and when he dared her to spank him with a magazine, she obliged.
Asked by the prosecutor where she swatted him, she replied: “On the butt”.
She later went to the bathroom, and came out to find him on the bed in boxer shorts and a T-shirt.
They had “brief” sex, she told the jury, and at one point she felt like she had “blacked out” even though she had not been drinking, evidence that led Trump’s team to demand a retrial.
“THE PROSECUTION, WHICH HAS NO CASE, HAS GONE TOO FAR. MISTRIAL!” Trump posted on social media during a break.
While much of Daniels’ story has been made public before – in TV interviews, books and documentaries – this was the first time the details had been laid bare for the 12-member jury who hold Trump’s fate in their hands.
Trump’s lawyers, however, sought to paint her as someone who was seeking fame and fortune, and who hated him.
Before she took the stand, Trump’s defence team had asked Judge Juan Merchan to limit lurid details about the sexual encounter, including specifics about “genitalia”, arguing that it could be unduly prejudicial.
Merchan agreed with that request and expressed frustration as prosecutors allowed Daniels to air salacious details that skirted close to the edge of his directive, such as whether Trump was wearing a condom or what sexual position they took.
In asking for a mistrial, Trump’s lawyer, Todd Blanche, argued these details were added to embarrass Trump and “inflame” the jury. However, Merchan denied this while acknowledging that at times the witness had been “a little bit difficult to control”.
It took two hours before prosecutors finally moved on to the substance of the case, which is not about whether the pair had an affair but rather, whether Trump fraudulently paid hush money to stop his campaign for office being derailed.
Daniels was paid $US130,000 ($198,000) by Trump’s lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen to silence her story on the eve of the 2016 election. Trump then reimbursed Cohen, but is alleged to have falsified business records to disguise the payment as a legal retainer.
She has previously denied sleeping with Trump, something she now claims she did for fear of retribution.
She told the court about being threatened by various people to not tell her story. One case, she said, involved an unknown man approaching her in a parking lot in Las Vegas while she was with her daughter.
In this courtroom sketch, Stormy Daniels testifies on the witness stand as Judge Juan Merchan looks on.Credit: AP
But in cross-examination, defence lawyer Susan Necheles suggested Daniels was out for revenge. Asked if she hated Trump, Daniels answered “yes”. Asked further if she wanted him jailed, Daniels said she wanted him to “be held accountable”.
Necheles then accused Daniels of trying to extort Trump through the hush-money payment, which she denied.
As the court adjourned for the day, Trump – who is under a gag order not to attack witnesses in the trial – did not refer to Daniels or her testimony when he addressed reporters. Instead, he once again described the case a “disgrace” and lamented the fact it was keeping him off the campaign trail.
“I’m stuck. I’m here instead of being in Georgia, instead of being in New Hampshire, instead of being in Wisconsin, and all the different states that we want to be,” he said.
Meanwhile, another of Trump’s criminal trials, this one relating to his alleged mishandling of classified documents, has been postponed indefinitely by US District Judge Aileen Cannon.
The trial had been set down for May 20 and the decision to delay indefinitely is a blow to the Justice Department’s efforts to obtain a jury verdict before the November presidential election.
News of the indefinite postponement of the Florida trial, along with uncertainty about dates for two election interference cases in Washington and Georgia, raises the stakes for the hush-money trial in New York.
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