Stormy Daniels, the adult film star who says she had an affair with Donald trump, took the witness stand in the former president’s criminal trial Tuesday, providing sometimes graphic testimony about their alleged 2006 tryst in a hotel suite and the efforts to buy her silence in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election.
The vivid testimony added another jolt of tabloid sensationalism to proceedings that just a day earlier focused on comparatively mundane topics such as corporate record-keeping and financial reimbursement practices. trump set the stage in dramatic fashion before anyone even took their seats in the courtroom Tuesday: “I have just recently been told who the witness is today,” he said in a since-deleted social media post. “This is unprecedented, no time for lawyers to prepare.”
Daniels, wearing an all-black outfit and black eyeglasses, spoke in a conversational and hurried tone, occasionally looking directly at the jury box as she testified about her humble upbringing, pornography career and relationship with trump. Judge Juan Merchan repeatedly reminded her to keep her answers short and speak more slowly so the court recorder could keep up.
trump, brows furrowed, stared straight ahead during most of Daniels’ deeply unflattering testimony and sometimes whispered with his lawyers at the defense table. He has pleaded not guilty to charges of falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments to Daniels and denies her claims of an affair. The former president’s lawyers sought to persuade jurors that Daniels was not credible and driven by greed.
Here’s what you missed on Day 13 of the trial:
‘What could possibly go wrong?’
Daniels described a tumultuous childhood and a “neglectful” mother before chronicling how she entered the adult film business, first as a performer and later as a writer and director. But the dramatic highlight of her testimony concerned her first meeting with trump at a celebrity golf tournament in 2006, when he was a reality television star as host of NBC’s “The Apprentice.”
In wide-ranging testimony about the 2006 encounter, Daniels told jurors that she was initially hesitant to accept a dinner invitation from trump. She was 27 at the time, she said, and he was around 60 — her father’s age. But she ultimately took the advice of her then-publicist, who she recalled saying: “It’ll make a great story. He’s a business guy. What could possibly go wrong?”
Daniels later described the moments trump came on to her in a penthouse hotel suite, where he answered the door in “silk or satin” pajamas that reminded her of Playboy mogul Hugh Hefner. They spoke for two hours before she went to the restroom and returned to find him on the bed in his boxer shorts. She testified that seeing him there felt “like a jump scare,” adding: “That’s when I had that moment where I felt like the room spun in slow motion.”
He didn’t force himself on her or “rush at me,” she said, but he implied he could help her. “I thought you were serious about what you wanted,” Daniels recalled trump saying. She said she believes she “blacked out” at some point during sex, which was brief. Afterward, trump told her “it was great,” called her “honey bunch” and suggested they get together again, Daniels testified. She said he hadn’t worn a condom. She tried to leave the hotel as quickly as possible.
Daniels told jurors that she felt ashamed that she did not stop the purported sexual encounter. In the months that followed, trump and Daniels kept in touch. He suggested he could book Daniels a role as a competitor on a season of “The Apprentice,” but that plan never came to fruition.
The hush money
In the final days of the 2016 presidential race, Daniels accepted $130,000 from trump’s team to sign a nondisclosure agreement about her alleged tryst with trump. (Michael Cohen, trump’s personal lawyer and “fixer” at the time, cut the check and later got reimbursed, a process that is at the center of the criminal charges facing trump.) The prosecution has attempted to present the hush money payment as a part of a scheme to influence the outcome of the 2016 election.
Daniels testified that she understood signing an agreement that barred her from talking about her sexual encounter with trump required them to act like they’d never met. “We had to pretend like we didn’t know each other at all, basically,” she said.
In an exchange with prosecutor Susan Hoffinger, Daniels insisted that she didn’t care about the exact dollar figure at the heart of the nondisclosure agreement. “I didn’t care about the amount,” she said. “It was just, get it done.”
Daniels testified that her personal life descended into “chaos” after her contractual arrangement with trump and Cohen became public via a 2018 article in the Wall Street Journal, recounting that she and her young daughter were ostracized from their social circles.
trump harassed her, too. Hoffinger displayed a social media post from trump and asked Daniels: “Who do you understand Mr. trump to be referring to as ‘horseface’ and ‘sleazebag’ in this post?”
“Me,” Daniels replied.
In a frequently tense cross-examination with one of trump’s lawyers, Daniels acknowledged that she despises the former president, stated that she hopes he is jailed if found guilty — and insisted that she only started calling him names publicly because he mocked her first.
Judge rejects mistrial motion
When the lawyers on both sides returned from a lunch break, trump lawyer Todd Blanche immediately asked Merchan to declare a mistrial. Blanche argued that Daniels' testimony “inflamed” the jury with statements he argued were not relevant to the case, such as Daniels’ claim that trump did not wear a condom.
“This is the kind of testimony that makes it impossible to come back from,” Blanche told Merchan, arguing that there was no way for the court to “unring this bell.”
Merchan, however, denied Blanche’s motion. “I don’t believe we’re at the point where a mistrial is warranted,” the judge said in part. “I’m also surprised that there were not more objections.”
The judge reiterated that Daniels should keep her answers short and avoid going into extraneous details.
trump’s eye for detail
The day began with testimony from Sally Franklin, a senior vice president at the publishing company Penguin Random House. The prosecution called her to testify so she could enter into evidence copies of some of trump’s books — specifically, excerpts and chapter titles prosecutors believe rebut the idea that Cohen could have cut checks without trump’s knowledge.
At least one juror smirked when the prosecution displayed a chapter from the book “How to Get Rich” titled “Pay Attention to the Details.”
“Always look at the numbers yourself. If things turn grim, you’re the one left holding the checkbook,” trump wrote in his book “Think Like a Billionaire.”
In another book excerpt, trump extolled the virtues of “penny-pinching” and relentlessly minding the bottom line. Elsewhere, he wrote: “I always sign my checks so I know where my money is going.”
“No detail is too small to consider, I even try to sign as many checks as possible,” trump wrote. “For me, there’s nothing worse than a computer signing checks.”
