Stormy Daniels describes brief encounter with Trump at hush-money trial
With Donald Trump sitting just metres away, Stormy Daniels testified yesterday at the former United States President’s hush-money trial about a sexual encounter the porn actor 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 mostawaited spectacle in a trial that has toggled between tabloidesque elements and dry record-keeping details.
A courtroom appearance by a porn actor who says she had an intimate encounter with a former American President added to the long list of historical firsts in a landmark case laden with claims of sex, payoffs and cover-ups, which is 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 in the day 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 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.
Daniels described how an initial meeting, 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 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”.
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.
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,”’ Daniels said. “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 criticising the former President with mocking and pejorative jabs.
Daniels was expected to return to the witness stand on Friday, when the trial resumes. 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 publication of the 2005 Access Hollywood footage in which he boasted about grabbing women’s genitals without their permission.