The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Daniels tells Trump trial ‘sex was real’
Donald Trump’s defence lawyers have grilled Stormy Daniels on the transaction at the centre of the former president’s hush money trial – pressing her on why she accepted a $130,000 payment to keep quiet about her alleged sexual encounter with Trump instead of going public.
“Why didn’t you do that?” lawyer Susan Necheles asked, wondering why Ms Daniels did not hold a news conference, as she had planned, to tell reporters about the 2006 encounter, which Trump denies ever happened.
“Because we were running out of time,” Ms Daniels said.
Did she mean, Ms Necheles asked, that she was running out of time to use the claim to make money?
“To get the story out,” Ms Daniels countered.
The negotiations happened in the final weeks of the 2016 presidential campaign, a critical point in the case against Trump because prosecutors are arguing that he and his allies snatched up these potentially damaging stories and buried them in an illegal effort to influence the November results.
Mr Trump denies any wrongdoing.
Ms Daniels returned for more testimony yesterday, avoiding eye contact with the former president as she walked into the Manhattan courtroom and made her way to the witness stand.
Trump’s lawyers have sought to paint the adult film actor as a liar and extortionist who is trying to take down Trump after drawing money and fame from her story about him.
Turning pointedly to Ms Daniels’s career as an adult film actor, writer and director, Ms Necheles asked: “You have a lot of experience in making phoney stories about sex appear real?”
“The sex in those films is real, just like the sex in that room,” Ms Daniels replied.
Ms Daniels was first called as a witness on Tuesday, describing what she said happened during their 2006 encounter in graphic detail.
Her testimony has been an extraordinary moment in what could be the only criminal case 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.