NEW YORK — Jurors pondering former President Trump’s fate in his hush-money criminal case heard the most damning details yet during Stormy Daniels’ long-awaited trial on the stand Tuesday.
New Yorkers spent hours listening to the sordid stories this porn actor told in interviews and even documentaries. She allegedly had sex with Trump in a hotel suite in 2006 and sold the story 10 years later to her then-fixer, Michael. Cohen. President Trump denies sexual contact.
Mr. Daniels’ testimony became so shoddy that by the afternoon Mr. Trump’s lawyers requested a mistrial. Judge Juan Melchan, although sympathetic to their concerns and critical of the prosecution, denied the motion and returned Daniels to the stand.
“I think there are some things that it would have been better not to have said,” the judge noted.
Her testimony, currently under cross-examination, is expected to continue when the trial resumes on Thursday.
Trump had 34 business records filed over a repayment plan to Cohen after a former Trump Organization lawyer sent Daniels $130,000 to keep her quiet before the 2016 election. He has been charged with falsification. He has maintained his innocence and denied any wrongdoing.
Mr. Daniels was called to court just as prosecutors began to shift their case from the sordid hush-money deal to the actual documents on which they indicted Mr. Trump.
Daniels, dressed in an all-black suit, looked disheveled when he entered the courtroom that morning, nervously smiling as he limped to the witness stand. She sat down, put on her thick-framed glasses, and swore she would tell her truth. Trump whispered with her lawyer before turning his attention to her testimony.
Almost 20 years after the suspicion behind closed doors, the two met again.
Most of the details Daniels provided Tuesday were already widely known. But her story, told under oath, left little to the imagination of a New York jury. She discussed sexual positions during her meeting with President Trump and suggested that he did not use a condom. Daniels even said he spanked the former president with a rolled up magazine.
She spoke quickly, a nervous energy emanated from the witness stand and was repeatedly asked to slow down, but Trump’s luxury hotel suite, which was “three times the size” of his apartment at the time, He explained in detail how he arrived at the room. The two had attended a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe in 2006, and Daniels thought they were going to have dinner, she said.
Daniels recalled walking into the foyer, which was decorated with a black-and-white tile floor and a “big, beautiful” wooden table with a “big, big” flower arrangement.
She detailed that Trump emerged from another room wearing silk or satin pajamas.
“I said, ‘Mr. Hefner, do you know that you stole his pajamas?'” she told the jury, laughing, referring to Playboy magazine’s famous founder Hugh Hefner. He came out and spoke.
During her testimony, jurors were less animated than they were earlier in the trial, with most keeping straight faces, some looking tired and some taking notes.
While many eyes were on Daniels, even some of her more intimate details about the alleged encounter didn’t seem to captivate jurors like other witnesses.
Mr. Trump often stared straight ahead, staring off into the distance for several minutes before returning his gaze to the stands. He sometimes tilted his head from side to side and seemed irritated.
His son, Eric Trump, was also in the courtroom for the racy testimony, frequently looking away from the monitor and Daniels to search his cell phone.
Before the trial, Mr. Trump’s lawyers tried unsuccessfully to prevent the jury from hearing anything from Mr. Daniels, and the defense asked the judge Tuesday morning to keep many of the sordid details secret.
Prosecutor Susan Hoffinger agreed to omit some details, such as depictions of genitals, but would need to detail the alleged sexual encounters as jurors assess whether Daniels is trustworthy. He claimed that there was.
Mr. Daniels provided a comprehensive explanation. She answered prosecutors’ questions emphatically with her hands, and when asked how Trump lay in bed that night, she said what most impressed her was the way he threw his arms and legs in the air. .
By lunch, the judges were not satisfied. Mr Machan appeared exasperated, criticizing prosecutors for going into too much detail and imploring witnesses not to go beyond the scope of their questions.
“Keep your answers short. Just listen to the questions and answer the questions,” Marchand told Daniels.
After Mr. Machan’s admonition, Mr. Daniels became noticeably restrained and less willing to answer questions in great detail when necessary. The defense raised multiple objections after Daniels expressed discomfort and shame about her sexual encounters with Trump.
But after lunch, Trump’s lawyers had had enough. They argued that jurors heard inappropriate details and asked the judge to grant their first motion for a mistrial in the case.
“The guardrails for this witness to answer the government’s questions have just been thrown aside,” said Todd Blanche, Trump’s lawyer.
The judge again expressed dissatisfaction, but after briefly hearing arguments, dismissed the motion. Marchand said the appropriate remedy would be to give the jury instructions limiting how some of Daniels’ testimony could be used in their deliberations.
“We do not believe that we have reached the point where a miscarriage of justice is warranted,” he told the court.
When it came time for the afternoon cross-examination, Trump’s lawyer Susan Necheles was tasked with portraying Daniels as an unreliable witness, leading to several heated exchanges between the two women.
When asked if she disliked President Trump, Daniels answered in the affirmative, “Yes.” And when asked if she wanted him to go to prison, she said, “I want him to be held accountable.”
Mr. Daniels’ 2006 recollection prevailed in court, but the cable network that had provided him with continuous play-by-play analysis was discontinued once the porn actor began talking about his alleged sexual encounters with Mr. Trump.
They moved on to briefly covering President Biden, another front-runner for president in 2024, at the same time he took to the Capitol podium to denounce anti-Semitism at a Holocaust memorial service. It was rising.
Story updated at 5:55 p.m.
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