Stormy Daniels accused of fabricating details of Trump tryst
My concern is not just with protecting Ms Daniels or a witness who has already testified. My concern is with protecting the integrity of these proceedings as a whole.
Judge Juan Merchan
Donald Trump’s defence lawyer yesterday accused Stormy Daniels of slowly altering the details of an alleged 2006 sexual encounter with Trump, trying to persuade jurors a key prosecution witness in the former president’s hush money trial cannot be believed.
“You made all this up, right?” Susan Necheles asked.
“No,” Daniels shot back.
As the jury looked on, the two women traded barbs over what Necheles said were inconsistencies in Daniels’ description of the encounter with Trump in a hotel room. He denies the whole story.
But despite all the talk over what may have happened in that hotel room, despite the discomforting evidence by the adult film actor that she consented to sex in part because of a “power imbalance,” the case against Trump doesn’t rise or fall on whether her account is true or even believable. It’s a trial about money changing hands — business transactions — and if those payments were made to illegally influence the 2016 election.
Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsifying internal Trump Organisation business records. The charges stem from paperwork such as invoices and cheques that were deemed legal expenses in company records. Prosecutors say those payments largely were reimbursements to Trump attorney Michael Cohen, who paid Daniels US$130,000 ($215,000) to keep quiet.
This criminal case could be the only one against the presumptive Republican presidential nominee to go to trial before voters decide in November whether to send him back to the White House. Trump has pleaded not guilty and casts himself as the victim of a politically tainted justice system working to deny him another term.
Meanwhile, as the threat of jail looms over Trump following his repeated gag order violations, his attorneys are fighting Judge Juan Merchan’s order and seeking a fast decision in an appeals court. If the court refuses to lift the gag order, Trump’s lawyers want permission to take their appeal to the state’s high court.
At the same time, they also asked Merchan to modify the order so Trump could publicly respond to Daniels’ evidence. Merchan denied the request, as well as two requests for a mistrial.
“My concern is not just with protecting Ms. Daniels or a witness who has already testified.
“My concern is with protecting the integrity of these proceedings as a whole,” Judge Merchan said.
Trump fumed outside the courtroom at the end of the day.
“I’m innocent,” he said. “I’m being held in this court with a corrupt judge who’s totally conflicted.”
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.
Prosecutors have argued that the political firestorm over the “Access Hollywood” tape hastened Cohen’s payment to keep Daniels from going public with her claims that could further hurt Trump in the eyes of female voters.
The tape rattled the Republican National Committee leadership, and “there were conversations about how it would be possible to replace him as the candidate if it came to that,” according to evidence from Madeleine Westerhout, a Trump aide who was working at the RNC when the recording leaked.
During questioning from prosecutors, Daniels relayed in graphic detail what she said happened during their encounter, after the two met at a celebrity golf outing at Lake Tahoe where sponsors included the adult film studio where she worked.
Trump scowled and shook his head through much of Daniels’ description, including how she found him sitting on the hotel bed in his underwear after she returned from the bathroom and that he did not use a condom.
At one point, the judge told defence lawyers during a sidebar conversation that he could hear Trump “cursing audibly”.
Trump’s lawyers have sought to paint Daniels as a liar and extortionist who’s trying to take down Trump after drawing money and fame from her story about him.
And they say the hush money payments were an effort to protect his reputation and family — not his campaign.
Yesterday, Necheles grilled Daniels on her description of the encounter in which she described fear and discomfort even as she consented to sex. Daniels said earlier this week that while she wasn’t physically menaced, she felt a “power imbalance” as Trump, in his hotel bedroom, stood between her and the door and propositioned her.
As for if she felt compelled to have sex with him, she reiterated that he didn’t drug her or physically threaten her, but “My own insecurities, in that moment, kept me from saying no.”
Necheles suggested her work in porn meant her story about being shocked and frightened by Trump’s alleged advances was not believable.
“You’ve acted and had sex in over 200 porn movies, right?” Necheles asked. “And there are naked men and women having sex, including yourself, in those movies?”
Necheles continued: “But according to you, seeing a man sitting on a bed in a T-shirt and boxers was so upsetting that you got lightheaded.”
The experience with Trump was different from porn for a number of reasons, Daniels explained, including the fact Trump was more than twice her age, larger than she and that she was not expecting to find him undressed when she emerged from the bathroom.
Necheles pressed her on why she accepted the payout to keep quiet instead of going public.
“Because we were running out of time,” Daniels said.
Did she mean, Necheles asked, that she was running out of time to use the claim to make money?
“To get the story out,” Daniels countered.
“The negotiations were happening in the final weeks of the 2016 presidential campaign.
She testified that she never spoke with Trump about payment, and said she had no knowledge of whether Trump was aware of or involved in the transaction.
Prosecutor Susan Hoffinger later asked Daniels: “Have you been telling lies about Mr Trump or the truth about Mr Trump?”
“The truth,” said Daniels, who also said that although she has made money since her story emerged, she also has had to spend a lot to hire security, move homes and take other precautions, and she still owes Trump hundreds of thousands of dollars in lawyer’s fees.
“On balance, has publicly telling the truth about Mr Trump been a net positive or net negative in your life?” Hoffinger asked.
“Negative,” Daniels replied quietly.