Donald
Trump at
Manhattan
Criminal
Court in
New York
on May
7.
(Sarah
Yenesel/Pool
via
Reuters) |
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Prosecutor
Susan
Hoffinger
questions
Stormy
Daniels
before
Justice
Juan
Merchan
during
former
President
Donald
Trump's
criminal
trial on
charges
of
falsifying
business
records
to
conceal
money
paid to
silence
porn
star
Stormy
Daniels
in 2016,
in
Manhattan
state
court in
New York
City, as
depicted
in this
courtroom
sketch
on May
7, 2024.
Jane
Rosenberg/Reuters |
|
Stormy
Daniels
testifies,
Trump
curses
in an
angry
day in
court
Devlin
Barrett,
Tom
Jackman,
Shayna
Jacobs,
Marianne
LeVine
washingtonpost.com
NEW YORK
— Stormy
Daniels,
the
adult-film
actress
at the
center
of
Donald
Trump’s
hush
money
trial,
testified
Tuesday
about a
disturbing
sexual
encounter
she says
she had
with
him,
leading
to
angry,
profane
muttering
from the
former
president
that
alarmed
the
judge.
New York
Supreme
Court
Justice
Juan
Merchan
called
Trump’s
lawyer
Todd
Blanche
to a
sidebar
during a
midday
break to
say that
Trump
was
“cursing
audibly”
and
possibly
intimidating
Daniels,
who had
begun
testifying,
according
to a
trial
transcript.
“I
understand
that
your
client
is upset
at this
point,”
Merchan
said to
the
defense
attorney,
according
to the
transcript,
“but he
is
cursing
audibly
and he
is
shaking
his head
visually
and
that’s
contemptuous.
It has
the
potential
to
intimidate
the
witness
and the
jury can
see
that.”
Blanche
assured
the
judge he
would
speak to
Trump.
“I am
speaking
to you
here at
the
bench
because
I don’t
want to
embarrass
him,”
Merchan
said.
“You
need to
speak to
him. I
won’t
tolerate
that.”
The
exchange
punctuated
a day of
rage —
sometimes
whispered
from the
defense
table,
sometimes
declared
loudly
by
Daniels
from the
witness
stand.
She is a
key
witness
in the
Manhattan
district
attorney’s
case
against
Trump,
the
first
former
president
to face
a
criminal
trial
and the
presumptive
GOP
nominee
for
president
in the
November
election.
Trump is
accused
of 34
counts
of
falsifying
business
records
for
allegedly
disguising
financial
transactions
related
to a
$130,000
hush
money
payment
made to
Daniels
in 2016
to keep
her
quiet
about
what she
said
happened
between
them. He
has
denied
the
charges,
and
denied
having
sex with
Daniels.
Speaking
rapidly
and
often
emphasizing
her
answers
by
pointing
her
finger
in the
air,
Daniels’s
dislike
of Trump
was
palpable
in the
courtroom,
but she
insisted
there
was
nothing
about
the
years of
bad
blood
between
them
that
made her
story
untrue.
Daniels
described
meeting
Trump at
a golf
event in
Lake
Tahoe,
Calif.,
and
being
invited
to his
hotel
suite
that
night.
When she
got
there,
she
talked
with the
reality
TV star
for a
couple
hours,
but then
to her
surprise
she
emerged
from the
bathroom
to find
him
wearing
a
T-shirt
and
boxers
and
posing
on the
bed,
Daniels
said.
“That’s
when I
had that
moment
when I
felt
like the
room
spun in
full
motion.
And I
felt the
blood
leave my
hands
and my
feet,
almost
like if
you
stand up
too
fast,”
she
testified.
Trump
“stood
up
between
me and
the
door,
not in a
threatening
manner,”
though
she said
she felt
an
imbalance
of
power,
particularly
with
Trump’s
security
guard
outside.
“I think
I
blacked
out,”
Daniels
said,
adding
that
there
were
many
details
she
didn’t
remember
but
insisting
that she
wasn’t
drugged
or
drunk.
“Next
thing I
know I
was on
the
bed,”
she
testified.
“I was
staring
at the
ceiling.
I didn’t
know how
I got
there.”
She said
the
encounter
was
brief.
Before
Daniels
testified,
Trump’s
lawyers
had
argued
that it
would be
unfair
to tell
the jury
salacious
details
about an
alleged
sexual
encounter
that is
not part
of the
charges
against
him.
Merchan
warned
prosecutor
Susan
Hoffinger
not to
go into
great
detail
about
the
alleged
encounter,
but the
prosecutor
elicited
not only
a
lengthy
description
of a
sexual
experience
that
often
did not
sound
consensual,
but also
a raft
of other
details,
down to
the
brand of
shampoo
in his
bathroom,
Pert
Plus.
Trump’s
lawyers
complained
bitterly
that
Daniels’s
account
of a
possible
sex
crime
had
hopelessly
tainted
the jury
against
him, and
asked
for a
mistrial.
“All of
this has
nothing
to do
with
this
case, is
extraordinarily
prejudicial
and the
only
reason
why the
government
asked
those
questions,
besides
pure
embarrassment,
is to
inflame
this
jury to
not look
at the
evidence
that
matters,”
Blanche
said.
Prosecutors
said the
jury
needed
to know
the
underlying
details
of
Daniels’s
alleged
encounter
with
Trump to
understand
why he
would be
motivated
to pay
money to
keep it
quiet.
And the
specifics,
they
said,
would
boost
her
credibility
after it
has been
attacked
by
Trump’s
lawyers.
Merchan
rejected
the
defense’s
request
for a
mistrial,
saying
that
while
Daniels
had
talked
too fast
and gone
into
greater
detail
than
he’d
like,
that was
partly
the
defense’s
fault
for not
objecting
more
strenuously.
“There
are some
things
that are
probably
better
left
unsaid,”
said
Merchan.
“I think
there
were
some
things
that I
think
the
witness
was a
little
difficult
to
control.
… It was
not
easy.”
The
judge
defended
his own
role
during
the
testimony,
saying
he had
done
“everything
that I
can
possibly
do to
protect
both
sides.”
Before
Daniels
was
brought
back to
testify,
he
instructed
the
prosecutor
to speak
to her
and make
it clear
that she
needed
to speak
slower,
and only
answer
the
questions
she was
asked.
The
fight
over
Daniels’s
testimony
comes
weeks
after
the same
prosecutor’s
office
suffered
a
stinging
defeat
when New
York’s
highest
court
tossed
out
their
conviction
of movie
mogul
Harvey
Weinstein,
saying
the
trial
judge
had
improperly
allowed
too much
testimony
about
uncharged
sexual
misconduct.
In the
Trump
case,
Merchan
has
insisted
that the
ruling
has no
bearing
on the
current
trial.
Outside
the
courtroom,
Trump
told
reporters
that the
day
featuring
Daniels
had
blown up
in the
prosecutors’
faces.
“This
was a
very big
day, a
very
revealing
day as
you see
their
case is
totally
falling
apart,”
he said.
“They
have
nothing
on books
and
records
and even
something
that
should
bear
very
little
relationship
to the
case.
It’s
just a
disaster
for the
D.A. …
this
whole
case is
just a
disaster.”
Trump’s
angry
demonstrations
from the
defense
table
were not
the
first
time
he’s
upset a
trial
judge.
The
federal
judge
overseeing
his
civil
trial
earlier
this
year
threatened
to expel
him from
the
courtroom
after he
audibly
disparaged
his
sexual
assault
accuser
E. Jean
Carroll,
who
successfully
sued him
for
defamation.
On
Tuesday
afternoon,
Trump
lawyer
Susan
Necheles
challenged
Daniels’s
shifting
accounts
of what
happened,
suggesting
she was
willing
to say
whatever
got her
paid. In
2011,
Daniels
acknowledged,
she had
tried
and
failed
to sell
her
story of
meeting
Trump
for
$15,000.
At times
she has
publicly
denied
that the
two had
sex, but
on the
witness
stand,
Daniels
insisted
that
those
were
lies
told to
live up
to the
terms of
the
nondisclosure
agreement
which
paid her
$130,000.
Necheles
suggested
that the
main
lesson
Daniels
learned
from the
2011
experience
was that
she
would
have to
make up
a story
about
having
sex with
Trump if
she
wanted
to make
money.
“Am I
correct
that you
hate
President
Trump …
and you
want him
to go to
jail,
right?”
Necheles
asked,
pointing
to an
old
social
media
post in
which
Daniels
said she
would
dance
down the
street
if he
were
locked
up.
“I want
him to
be held
accountable,”
Daniels
replied.
When
Necheles
suggested
that
Daniels
talked
about
Trump to
make
money,
Daniels
fired
back:
“Don’t
we all
want to
make
money
for
ourselves?”
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