Porn actress tells hush-money trial about sexual encounter with Trump
NEW YORK — With Donald Trump sitting just feet away, Stormy Daniels testified Tuesday at the former U.S. president’s hush-money trial about a sexual encounter the porn actress says they had in 2006 that resulted in her being paid to keep silent during the presidential race 10 years later.
Jurors appeared riveted as Daniels offered a detailed and at times graphic account of the encounter Trump has denied. Trump stared straight ahead when Daniels entered the courtroom, later whispering to his lawyers and shaking his head as she testified.
The testimony was by far the most-awaited spectacle in a trial that has toggled between tabloidesque elements and dry record-keeping details. A courtroom appearance by a porn actress who says she had an intimate encounter with a former American president added to the long list of historic firsts in a landmark case laden with claims of sex, payoffs and cover-ups and unfolding as the presumptive Republican nominee makes another bid for the White House.
Daniels veered into salacious details despite the repeated objections of defence lawyers, who demanded a mistrial over what they said were prejudicial and irrelevant comments.
“This is the kind of testimony that makes it impossible to come back from,” lawyer Todd Blanche said. “How can we come back from this in a way that’s fair to President Trump?”
The judge rejected the request and said defence lawyers should have raised more objections during the testimony. The Trump team later used its opportunity to question Daniels to paint her as motivated by personal animus and profiting off her claims against Trump.
“Am I correct that you hate President Trump?” defence lawyer Susan Necheles asked Daniels.
“Yes,” she acknowledged.
Daniels’ statements are central to the case because in the final weeks of Trump’s 2016 Republican presidential campaign, his then-lawyer and personal fixer, Michael Cohen, paid her $130,000 US to keep quiet about what she says was an awkward and unexpected sexual encounter with Trump in July 2006 at a celebrity golf outing in Lake Tahoe. Trump has pleaded not guilty.
Led by a prosecutor’s questioning, Daniels described how an initial meeting at a golf tournament, where they discussed the adult film industry, progressed to a “brief” sexual encounter that, she said, Trump initiated after inviting her to dinner and back to his hotel suite.
She said she didn’t feel physically or verbally threatened, though she knew his 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 has not been in court for the trial. Daniels said Trump told her they did not sleep in the same room, prompting him to shake his head at the defence table.
After it ended, Daniels said, “It was really hard to get my shoes because my hands were shaking so hard. He said: ‘Oh, it was great. Let’s get together again, honey bunch.’ I just wanted to leave.”
In the years since the encounter was disclosed, Daniels has emerged as a vocal Trump antagonist, sharing her story innumerable times and criticizing the former president with mocking and pejorative jabs. But there was no precedent for Tuesday’s testimony, when she came face-toface with Trump and was asked under oath in an austere courtroom to describe her experiences to a jury weighing whether to convict a former American 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 when Trump’s group passed through, chatting about the adult film industry and her directing abilities. The celebrity real estate developer remarked that she must be “the smart one” if she was making films, Daniels recalled.
Later, in an area known as the “gift room,” where celebrity golfers collected gift bags and swag, Trump remembered her as “the smart one” and asked her to dinner, Daniels said.