Porn star Stormy Daniels confronted a dour Donald Trump with salacious details of their alleged tryst in Manhattan court Tuesday — delivering testimony so ridiculous that even the judge warned her to tone it down.
Jurors in the secret trial struggled to keep a straight face as the adult film actress – speaking fast and gesturing wildly – described spanking the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee with a rolled-up magazine whose face was on the cover.
“I took it, turned it around and hit it,” Daniel, 45, testified, prompting smirks from at least two jurors and Trump, 77, who reportedly said “It’s bullshit” to his lawyers.
Trump appeared silent at the defense table, shaking his head when Daniels – born Stephanie Clifford – claimed he told her not to “worry” about his wife Melania because the two weren’t even sleeping in the same room. »
Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan then sidelined Trump’s lawyer, Todd Blanche, saying the ex-president was “audibly swearing” and “visually shaking his head,” and warned him that he must resign under penalty of contempt for possibly influencing the jury.
“You need to talk to him. I will not tolerate this,” Merchan said during a sidebar to the judge’s bench.
Trump’s lawyers raised objections throughout the graphic testimony, with Merchan ruling in their favor on several occasions, including when Daniels gave bawdy details about their alleged sex act.
The judge also chastised prosecutors saying the “level of detail” was “unnecessary” when Daniels described the tiles on the floor of the hotel where she said she had sex with Trump in 2006 and the subjects that The two of them had talked.
But Merchan sided with prosecutors in saying Daniels should be allowed to tell jurors about her alleged one-night stand with the real estate mogul — in order to establish her “credibility.”
During testimony that sounded like something out of the “Jerry Springer Show,” Daniels said she had “brief” sex with Trump in the “missionary position.”
That prompted an objection from Trump’s lawyers, which was upheld because the judge ruled that going into details of the sexual act would be prohibited.
Jurors were visibly unresponsive when Daniels — dressed in a hooded black kimono over a tight black shirt, with glasses resting on her messy blond hair — detailed the encounter, including the fact that Trump was not wearing no condom, which she said worried her, as a man. porn actors have always done it.
Daniels appeared to be looking in Trump’s direction at times, although the two did not appear to make eye contact.
She recalled meeting Trump in 2006 in Lake Tahoe at a celebrity golf tournament, testifying that the two men joked and she was eventually invited to dinner with him, although they never finished by eating together.
Daniels testified that he went to Trump’s luxury hotel suite to find him in Hugh Hefner-style “silk or satin” pajamas, before politely changing at his request.
He showed her some photos, to which she replied, “Oh, what about your wife?” Daniels recounted, referring to Melania, who married Trump the year before.
“He said, don’t worry about it, we don’t even sleep in the same room,” Daniels testified, wrinkling his nose, prompting Trump to burst into expletives.
Eventually, Daniels told jurors, “I was tired of his arrogance.”
She then told Trump that “someone should spank you.”
“Where did you hit him?” prosecutor Susan Hoffinger asked him.
“Right on the butt,” Daniels replied.
Daniels said she didn’t tell her then-boyfriend and former publicist about the sexual encounter because she was “ashamed.”
She also claimed Trump made sexual advances toward her the following year after inviting her to the Miss America beauty pageant in Los Angeles, but she told him she was on her period to get away with it.
Blanche, Trump’s lawyer, requested a mistrial following Daniels’ “prejudicial” and gripping testimony, arguing it could sway the jury against Trump.
Merchan rejected the offer, but acknowledged there were some things it would have been better not to say.
Nonetheless, Merchan said in fairness to prosecutors: “I think the witness was very difficult to control. »
Daniels was taken to a side room with prosecutors to talk to her and make sure she remained “focused” before returning to the witness stand. She then spoke more slowly and alternated between looking at prosecutors and jurors.
Trump’s lawyer, Susan Necheles, during cross-examination, quickly got Daniels to admit that she hated Trump and wanted “him to be held accountable.”
Necheles asked Daniels about the tweet that Trump was an “orange turd” on November 9, 2022 – but Daniels fired back saying she made the comment because “he made fun of me first.”
During the combative investigation, in which Daniels appeared increasingly frustrated, Necheles pressed her to make money from her claims about her dealings with Trump.
“You make money pretending to have sex with Donald Trump for over a decade, right?” Necheles said at one point.
“I made money telling my story,” Daniels retorted.
Trump, joined in court by So Eric — who talked X about the case during breaks — appeared to be reclining in his seat between his two other attorneys during cross-examination.
Earlier, Daniels described how Trump and his former lawyer and “fixer” Michael Cohen wanted to buy her story in a “catch and kill” scheme to keep her quiet about their alleged tryst in October 2016 after the infamous cassette “Access Hollywood”. was disclosed.
“They were interested in paying for the story,” she recalled of her manager approaching her about their proposal.
Daniels testified that it seemed like the “best thing” to happen “because then I would be safe and the story wouldn’t come out.”
Trump is accused of asking Cohen to pay Daniels and then trying to cover it all up in an effort to “corrupt” the 2016 election. He has denied any wrongdoing and called it politically motivated.
Daniels, who is expected to continue testifying Thursday, told jurors she planned to sell her story to the media before payment.
“My motivation was not money,” she insisted on the stand. “It was to get the story out there.”
As he left court, Trump told reporters that the case against him was “totally falling apart.”
“They have nothing on the books and records and even something that should have very little relevance to the case,” he said of prosecutors. “This whole thing is a disaster.”
New York Post
