What porn actor Stormy Daniels testified at the Trump trial about money paid to silence her

Jurors seemed fascinated as Daniels offered a detailed and sometimes graphic account of the encounter that Trump has denied. Trump stared straight ahead as Daniels entered the courtroom, then whispered to his lawyers and shook his head during his testimony.

This testimony was by far the most anticipated spectacle in a trial that oscillates between tabloidesque elements and dry details of record keeping. The court appearance of a porn actress who claims she had an intimate encounter with a former US president adds to the long list of historic firsts in a landmark case fraught with allegations of sex, bribery and of cover-ups and which unfolds as the presumptive Republican candidate does. another bid for the White House.

Daniels delved into salacious details despite repeated objections from defense attorneys, who demanded a mistrial because of what they considered damaging and irrelevant comments.

“This is the kind of testimony that you can’t come back from,” said attorney Todd Blanche. “How can we address this situation in a way that is fair to President Trump? »

The judge denied the request and said defense attorneys should have raised more objections during testimony. Later in the day, Team Trump took the opportunity to question Daniels to describe her as motivated by personal animosity and profiting from her claims against Trump.

“Am I right that you hate President Trump? Defense attorney Susan Necheles asked Daniels.

“Yes,” she admitted.

Daniels’ statements are at the heart of the case because during the final weeks of Trump’s 2016 Republican presidential campaign, his then-lawyer and personal assistant, Michael Cohen, paid him $130,000 to remain silent over what she says was an awkward and unexpected sexual encounter with Trump. in July 2006 during a celebrity golf outing in Lake Tahoe. Trump has pleaded not guilty.

Under questioning from the prosecutor, Daniels described how an initial meeting at a golf tournament, where they discussed the adult film industry, evolved into a “brief” sexual relationship that she said Trump had initiated it after inviting her to dinner and back to his hotel suite.

She said she did not feel physically or verbally threatened, even though she knew her bodyguard was outside the suite. There was also what she perceived as an imbalance of power: Trump “was bigger and blocking the way,” she said.

At the time, Trump was married to his wife, Melania, who was not in court for the trial. Daniels said Trump told him they didn’t sleep in the same room, prompting him to shake his head at the defense table.

After it was over, Daniels said, “It was really hard to get my shoes back because my hands were shaking so much.”

“He said, ‘Oh, that was great. Let’s meet up, honey,” Daniels said. “I just wanted to leave.”

Trump’s reaction to his testimony at the defense table prompted Judge Juan Merchan to summon his lawyers for a quiet discussion in court.

“I understand your client is upset at this point, but he is audibly swearing and he is visually shaking his head and it is dismissive. It has the potential to intimidate the witness and the jury can see that,” Merchan said, adding, “I’m talking to you here at the bench because I don’t want to embarrass them. »

“I’ll talk to him,” Blanche replied.

In the years since the encounter was revealed, Daniels has become a vocal antagonist of Trump, sharing her story numerous times and criticizing the former president with mocking and derogatory remarks. But there was no precedent for Tuesday’s testimony, when she came face-to-face with Trump and was asked under oath in a stark courtroom to describe her experiences to a jury who questioned whether to convict a former U.S. president of felony crimes for the first time. in history.

She told jurors how she met Trump because the adult film studio she worked for at the time sponsored one of the holes on the golf course. She said they had a brief conversation as Trump’s group passed by, discussing the adult film industry and her abilities as a director. The famous real estate developer remarked that she had to be “the smartest one” if she was going to make films, Daniels recalled.

Later, in an area known as the “gift room,” where famous golfers collected gift bags and presents, Trump remembered her as “the smartest one” and asked her to dinner, Daniels said.

She said her publicist at the time suggested in a phone call that Trump’s invitation was a good excuse to skip a working dinner and that it would “make a great story” and perhaps help her career.

“What could go wrong?” she remembered the publicist’s saying.

The two met again periodically in the years that followed, when she said she had rejected Trump’s advances.

In 2011, several years after their last contact with Trump, she said she learned from her agent that the story of her meeting with Trump had been published in a magazine.

She said she agreed to an interview for $15,000 because “I’d rather make money than have someone make money off me, and at least I could control the narrative.” The story was never published, but later that year she was alarmed when an article appeared on a website.

Perhaps seeking to preempt defense claims that she was in dire need of a massive settlement, Daniels testified that she was in the best financial situation of her life when she allowed her manager to tell her story during the 2016 presidential campaign.

She said she had no intention of approaching Cohen or Trump about paying her.

“My motivation wasn’t money,” she said. “It was to get the story out there,” she testified.

But Necheles focused on that, pressuring Daniels that she owes Trump hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees stemming from an unsuccessful defamation lawsuit and tweeting in 2022 that she “will go to jail before paying a dime.” »

“That was me saying, ‘I’m not going to pay to tell the truth,'” Daniels testified Tuesday.

She then forcefully denied that she was trying to extort money from Trump.

“You were looking to extort money from President Trump,” Necheles said.

“Wrong,” Daniels replied.

“Well, that’s what you did,” the lawyer said.

“Wrong,” Daniels replied.

Daniels was expected to return to the witness stand Thursday, when the trial resumed.

The testimony so far has made clear that at the time of the payment to Daniels, Trump and his campaign were reeling from the October 2016 release of the never-before-seen 2005 “Access Hollywood” footage in which he bragged about having grabbed women’s genitals without their hands. authorisation.

Before this video was made public, “there was little to no interest in Daniels’ claims,” ​​according to testimony from his then-attorney, Keith Davidson, earlier in the trial. A deal was reached with the National Enquirer on the Daniels story, but the tabloid backed out. Davidson began negotiating directly with Cohen, increased the price to $130,000 and reached an agreement.

After the deadline for Cohen’s $130,000 payment passed, she authorized Davidson to cancel the deal. He did so, via email, according to documents presented to the court. But about two weeks later, the deal was revived.

Daniels testified that she ended up with about $96,000 of the $130,000 payment, after her lawyer and agent got their share.

She also said she was committed to upholding her nondisclosure agreement with Cohen, declining to comment to The Wall Street Journal on a November 2016 article that reported she had been in discussions to tell her story on “Good Morning America “, but nothing had happened. of it. She also declined to comment for the newspaper before it broke the news of her hush money deal in 2018.

After the story was published, her life turned into “chaos,” she testified.

“I was front and center everywhere,” she recalls.

Prosecutors are turning to their star witness, Cohen, who pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the secret payments.

Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records in connection with the payments. The trial is the first of his four criminal cases to go before a jury.