- Stormy Daniels took the stand at Trump’s hush-money trial Tuesday.
- The adult-film actress stood 20 feet from Trump in court and swore to tell the truth.
- Trump allegedly falsified records to hide an election-influencing, $130,000 hush-money payment to Daniels.
He calls here “horseface.” She calls him “Tiny.”
On Tuesday, these two arch-enemies — with a potential felony conviction at stake — faced each other for the first time in a decade at former President Donald Trump’s criminal hush-money trial.
“My name is Stormy Daniels,” the porn star at the center of the historic trial said as she swore to tell the truth while on the witness stand of a Manhattan courtroom, just 20 feet from Trump.
Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, wore black-rimmed glasses and an all-black, loose-fitting shirt and sweater as she took the witness stand. Trump sat at the defense table, his posture slightly slumped. He looked down at the defense table, not at Daniels, as she began her testimony.
Daniels’ testimony quickly pivoted to July 2006, when she met Trump at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe and later that night wound up in the then-“Apprentice” star’s penthouse hotel suite after accepting a dinner invitation.
It was in that hotel suite where Daniels insists she and Trump had sex — an allegation Trump vehemently denies.
Daniels told the jury Trump greeted her at the door wearing “satin or silk” pajamas, and that she immediately cracked a Hugh Hefner joke and asked him to change.
While chatting in his hotel room, Trump expressed interest in how Daniels “segued from being a porn star to writing and directing.”
At one point, Trump raised the idea of Daniels appearing on Trump’s hit reality TV show, “The Apprentice,” testified Daniels, who said she told Trump that there was no way NBC would let her on TV.
“You remind me of my daughter. You’re blonde and beautiful and people love seeing them on TV as well,” Daniels recalled Trump telling here.
Trump told Daniels he could help rig the show in her favor “to make sure that you would make a good showing,” Daniels said.
Daniels also told the jury that, at one point, Trump’s wife and former first lady, Melania Trump, came up during their conversation.
“He said, ‘Oh, don’t worry about that. We don’t even sleep in the same room,'” Daniels testified.
Daniels then detailed the alleged sexual encounter, saying that after she went to the bathroom and exited, Trump was on the bed in only his boxer shorts and a T-shirt.
“I felt the blood basically leave my hands and my feet,” Daniels told the jury. “I just thought, ‘Oh my god,’ what did I misread to get there.’ The intention was pretty clear.”
“The next thing I know I was on the bed,” Daniels said. “I had my clothes and my shoes off.”
When Daniels uttered the words “missionary position,” Trump’s attorneys objected, and the judge sustained the objection.
Daniels testified that Trump did not wear a condom during the encounter and that it concerned her, but she “didn’t say anything at all.”
Afterward, she said Trump told her they’d have to get together again soon, brought up “The Apprentice,” and kissed her goodbye.
“I told very few people that we had sex because I felt very ashamed that I didn’t stop it and I didn’t say no,” Daniels said.
Daniels — and the $130,000 hush money payment that bought her silence just 11 days before the 2016 election — is the reason Trump has been on trial in Manhattan since mid-April.
Prosecutors for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg say that Trump falsified 34 Trump Organization business documents throughout 2017, his first week in office, when he reimbursed then-attorney and fixer Michael Cohen for paying Daniels the hush money.
The business records — shown to jurors for the first time on Monday — disguised Cohen’s reimbursement checks as “legal fees,” hiding what was actually an illegal conspiracy to influence the 2016 election, prosecutors say.
Daniels is an adult entertainment entrepreneur who has capitalized on her connection to Trump, writing a book, participating in a controversial documentary, and embarking on a “Make America Horny Again” tour of strip clubs.
She told the court Tuesday that she moved out of her family home in high school because she had trouble living with her mother and started stripping for money.
Daniels told the jury she directed her first adult film at age 23.
“I was one of the youngest, if not the youngest, adult feature directors,” she said.
When she first met Trump at the Lake Tahoe celebrity golf tournament, she told the jury he quickly complimented her.
“Oh, you actually direct, too? You must be very smart,” Daniels recalled Trump telling here.
Stormy Daniels, in her new documentary, “Stormy.”
Peacock
In a now-deleted early Tuesday morning https://twitter.com/TylerMcBrien/status/1787812898468667542/photo/1 on Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social, the former president fumed after he apparently found out Daniels would take the witness stand on Tuesday.
“I have just recently been told who the witness is today. This is unprecedented, no time for lawyers to prepare,” Trump’s 7:30 am post read, adding, “No judge has ever run a trial in such a biased and partisan way .”
Before the jury was called on Tuesday, attorneys for Trump objected to Daniels “testifying about any sexual act.”
“We’re informed the witness today, the second witness, will be Stormy Daniels,” Trump defense attorney Susan Necheles told New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, adding that testimony about any sexual act would be “unduly prejudicial.”
Prosecutor Susan Hoffinger explained that there would be details in Daniels’ testimony about how the porn star “ended up having a sexual encounter” with Trump.
“In terms of the sexual act, it’s going to be very basic,” she added. “It’s not going to be descriptions of genitalia or anything of that nature.”
Still, Necheles said, “There’s just no need for any of those details here.”
“There’s real questions about the credibility of this woman,” Necheles said of Daniels. “This is a case about books and records.”
Merchan said Daniels has “credibility issues,” but that he was “satisfied with the representations that Ms. Hoffinger has made.”
This is a breaking story; please check back for developments.
