Stormy Monday
Former president’s lawyers lose fight to silence alleged mistress
THE former Playboy model who had an alleged year-long affair with married Donald Trump will be allowed to testify at his porn star hush money trial.
As the businessman, 77, yesterday became the first president in history to go on criminal trial, the judge dealt him a bitter blow by allowing prosecutors to call Karen McDougal to give evidence.
The move was a shuddering wake-up call for the millionaire, who witnesses inside the court said appeared at times to be sleeping, with his head “dropping down and his mouth going slack”.
Trump lawyer Todd Blanche argued McDougal’s evidence “would do nothing but confuse the jury about the actual crime charged”.
But Judge Juan Merchan also ruled testimony – showing Trump’s 2016 election campaign coordinated with the tabloid magazine National Enquirer to suppress McDougal’s allegations – could be brought before the jury.
He, however, prevented attorneys from quizzing the model, 53, on salacious details of the alleged affair and banned any reference to his wife, Melania, being pregnant during the alleged tryst.
Yesterday, dozens of potential jurors began to be called into the Manhattan courtroom to start the jury selection process. They will be tasked with hearing the case that accuses Trump of falsifying business records as part of a scheme to bury stories he feared could hurt his 2016 campaign.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts that arose from an alleged effort to keep salacious – and, he says, bogus – stories about his sex
life emerging during his campaign. Charges centre on $130,000 in payments Trump’s company made to his then-lawyer, Michael Cohen.
He had paid that sum on Trump’s behalf to keep porn actor Stormy Daniels from going public a month before the election with her claims of a sexual encounter with the mogul a decade earlier.
The case will also hear allegations of a former Trump Tower doorman who claimed to have a story about a child he alleged the former president had out of wedlock.
Trump denies the alleged sexual encounters.
It would confuse jury about the crime charged lawyer todd blanche made plea to judge