Stormy Daniels stays consistent: Trump trial key takeaways, day 14
Lawyers for Donald Trump on Thursday sought to discredit and undermine testimony from Stormy Daniels, who gave combative testimony about her alleged sexual encounter with the former president and the $130,000 hush-money payment at the heart of the criminal case.
Prosecutors also started laying the groundwork for their move to tie Trump to former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen – who wired the hush money and was reimbursed – by calling former White House aide Madeleine Westerhout to the stand.
Here are the key takeaways from day 14 of Trump’s criminal trial:
Daniels’s story remains mostly
consistent and intact
Trump’s lawyer Susan Necheles suggested through her cross-examination of Stormy Daniels that her story about her alleged sexual encounter with Trump had changed every time she told it publicly, attempting to cast doubt on the account she provided in her testimony on Tuesday.
The inconsistencies that Necheles pulled Daniels up on, however, came across as inconsequential.
For instance, Daniels had told CNN’s Anderson Cooper in a 2018 interview that she had dinner with Trump at the encounter. But Necheles noted that when she retold the story on the witness stand, she confirmed she never had dinner and was now suggesting she had “dinner time”.
And when Daniels told the story to InTouch magazine in a 2011 interview, she recalled that Trump was lying on the bed when she came out of the bathroom, she thought to herself, “Oh, here we go”, they kissed and then had sex. But she claimed at trial that she blacked out and found herself having sex.
The retelling of the alleged sexual encounter was different in tone and substance, but there was one major detail that prosecutors, on redirect examination, confirmed was consistent: she recalled having sex with Trump in 2011 and at trial.
Daniels, who spoke quickly and appeared unfazed by Necheles’s questions, refused to concede any inconsistencies. “You’re trying to make it say that it changed, but it hasn’t changed,” she said.
Westerhout confirms Trump scrutinized finances
The former Trump White House director of Oval Office operations, Madeleine Westerhout, confirmed – even