NEW YORK — Stormy Daniels told a riveted jury Tuesday that sex with Donald Trump made her feel dizzy and had the room spinning as she wondered how she ended up half-naked in a Lake Tahoe hotel room with the then-reality TV star at the former president’s hush money trial.
Her testimony sparked a demand by Trump’s lawyers for a mistrial – which was denied.
In one of the trial’s more surreal moments, the porn star recounted her tryst with Trump in 2006 as the former president looked on with a scowl.
“What could possibly go wrong?” she remembered her publicist telling her, encouraging her to go to meet with Trump. Daniels thought it could be a good business opportunity since she wrote and directed and wanted to branch out from only adult films.
Daniels and Trump met at his hotel room, which was “three times the size” of Daniels’ apartment, where they chatted about the business of the porn industry and had a “very brief” discussion of Melania, Trump’s new wife.
Trump wore a silk pajama set, which Daniels, which she made fun of, asking him if “Mr. Hefner knew you stole his pajamas?”
Trump changed.
He suggested that she come on “The Apprentice,” telling her she was “smart and blond and beautiful,” just like his daughter.
“You’re not just a dumb bimbo,” he told her, Daniels said. “You’re more than people think.”
At one point, Daniels went to use the bathroom. When she came back out, Trump was perched on the bed, striking a pose in just his boxers and a t-shirt.
“At first, it was just startling, like a jump scare,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting him to be there, especially minus a lot of clothing.”
Trump watched from the defense table, glowering at points and muttering to himself and his lawyers. During much of her testimony, he kept his eyes trained on the ceiling.
“I felt the room spin in slow motion,” she said, wondering how she misread the situation to end up in this position. “I felt the blood leave my hands… almost like when you stand up too fast.”
She tried to crack a joke and leave, but Trump blocked her exit. Daniels said there was an “imbalance of power” but that she wasn’t threatened.
“The next thing I know, I was on the bed, somehow on the opposite side,” she said. “I had my clothes and my shoes off. My bra however was still on. We were in missionary position.”
Afterward, Daniels said she was ashamed, telling “very few people” that they’d had sex.
Trump continued to call her after, ringing her up several times a week.
“He always called me honeybunch,” she said.
Trump didn’t ask her to keep the encounter confidential, Daniels said.
Move for mistrial denied
Daniel’s explosive testimony prompted a demand by Trump’s lawyers for a mistrial — which Judge Merchan promptly denied.
Trump lawyer Todd Blanche said Stormy Daniels’ testimony in the morning was “unduly and inappropriately prejudicial to President Trump,” and asked the court to severely limit her testimony at the “next trial.”
The parts of the testimony Trump’s team took issue with included her testimony on condom use during sex, their differing heights and the power dynamic between the two.
“This is the kind of testimony that there’s no coming back from,” Blanche said.
Susan Hoffinger countered that the defense opened the door in opening statements by making claims about Daniels, impugning her character and credibility. She said she was extremely mindful not to elicit too much testimony.
“At the end of the day, your honor, this is what the defendant was trying to hide.”
Daniels sheds light on hush money deal
Daniels also testified about the hush money deal that lies at the heart of the case against Trump.
She said she was approached in a parking lot in 2011 when she was with her infant daughter, she said, where she was “threatened” and told not to share her story. Scared, she kept mum on it.
Then, after Trump announced his candidacy in 2015, Daniels’ agent approached her about telling her story. She talked it over with a lawyer and decided to share it.
Prosecutor Susan Hoffinger asked whether this decision was guided by what happened to her in the parking lot and wanted to ensure it was documented.
“Yes,” Daniels said.
Daniels also testified that it was her and her agent’s idea to sell the story to news outlets.
“My motivation wasn’t money, it was to get the story out,” Daniels said adamantly after Hoffinger asked if she wanted lawyer Keith Davidson to negotiate with Cohen for money. “I was motivated out of fear and not money.”
Daniels understood Trump to be the beneficiary, that neither of them could acknowledge knowing the other, and that she would be liable for $1 million “every time I said something”
“I was afraid that if it wasn’t done before the nominations and things, then I wouldn’t be safe,” she said, then clarifying she meant the election.
Stormy sworn in
Daniels sashayed up to the witness box, swore to tell the truth, and spelled out her stage name. Trump turned his head and looked at her just before she took her seat. He averted his eyes from her at points, looking up at the ceiling as she spoke.
The adult film actress, who told the jury her real name is Stephanie Clifford but prefers going by Stormy, began her day in court talking about her Louisiana upbringing, religious schooling and getting into tap dance.
She got into exotic dancing after a friend invited her to see her dance. Daniels thought it “was the same kind of dancing I did.” It was not. Years later, at 23, she got her start in porn after agreeing to be a clothed extra in one film.
The former president’s legal team began the day’s proceedings asking Judge Juan Merchan to prevent her from divulging “salacious” details of their alleged tryst more than a decade ago.
But prosecutor Susan Hoffinger said it was vital for the prosecution to establish the credibility of Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, promising, “It’s not going to involve any details of genitalia.”
Merchan said he would allow limited testimony on the topic.
Daniels has long alleged she slept with Trump at a 2006 charity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe, not long after his marriage to Melania and less than a year after the birth of his youngest child.
When she testified at her former lawyer Michael Avenatti’s trial, at which he was accused and ultimately convicted of stealing her advance book proceeds, the adult film star rejected descriptions of the encounter as an affair.
“I don’t consider getting cornered coming out of a bathroom to be an affair,” Daniels testified.
Jurors last week heard extensive testimony from her lawyer in 2016, Keith Davidson, who told the court about Michael Cohen’s eleventh-hour effort to pay her off before the election Trump won to ensure the electorate wouldn’t learn of her claims before heading to the polls.
Daniels first sought to go public about the tryst with Trump in a 2011 interview with InTouch, but the story was killed after Cohen threatened to sue. The magazine published her claims years later, in March 2018, reporting that it had corroborated her claims with her ex-husband and that she’d passed a lie detector test.
Trump is facing 34 felonies in his Manhattan criminal case, all of which he denies, alleging he covered up his reimbursement to Cohen for paying off Daniels after he took the White House.
Prosecutors say the payments came as the last stage of a scheme to influence the results of the 2016 election first devised at Trump Tower between Trump, Cohen, and former tabloid publisher David Pecker.
On Monday, jurors saw the 2017 checks to Cohen bearing Trump’s famous spiky signature and handwritten notes by his former finance chief calculating the fixer’s debt for handling the hush money deal.
Trump’s defense has claimed that he didn’t know about the payment and believed he was paying his then-personal lawyer for legitimate legal work.
“We didn’t put it down as construction costs, the purchase of sheetrock, the electrical costs,” Trump said on his way into court on Tuesday morning. “The legal expense that we paid was put down as legal expense. There’s nothing else you could say.”
During testimony by Hope Hicks on Friday, Trump’s former campaign press secretary and White House communications chief said Trump acknowledged Cohen had paid off the porn star when it was first reported in detail, claiming to her he didn’t know about it and that Cohen did it out of “the kindness of his heart.”
Hicks conceded that would be out of character for Cohen, casting doubt on the likelihood he didn’t expect to be paid back.
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