Adult film actress Stormy Daniels was cross-examined Tuesday by former President Donald Trump’s lawyer after giving explicit testimony about an alleged sexual encounter she had with Trump in a Lake Tahoe hotel room in 2006.
Trump, who denies any such encounter, is charged with falsifying business records to hide a hush money payment made to Daniels so she would not publicly share her allegations before the 2016 election.
Stephanie A. Gregory Clifford, known professionally as Stormy Daniels, took the witness stand at Trump’s New York criminal trial on Tuesday, testifying under oath about the sexual encounter she says she had with him in 2006 and the $130,000 deal for her silence that was struck during the closing days of the 2016 presidential campaign.
Daniels described parts of the 2006 encounter in detail and said that Trump did not use a condom.
Trump attorney Todd Blanche urged the judge to declare a mistrial, saying that the porn star’s testimony was “unduly and inappropriately prejudicial.”
Judge Juan Merchan denied a motion to declare a mistrial but acknowledged that “there were things that would have been better left unsaid,” and said he would strike some of her testimony from the record.
Defense attorney Susan Necheles has been going over the judgments that have been entered against Stormy Daniels in her litigation with Donald Trump, to try to show the jury that Daniels has a financial motive to see him jailed.
Stormy Daniels denied she found testifying against Donald Trump funny, though she did admit that she hated him and had once declared she would “dance down the street” if he goes to jail.
Trump lawyer Susan Necheles read an old tweet that Daniels had posted in which she fantasized about dancing when Trump is locked up.
“You just laughed about that,” Necheles said. “It’s not because you think this is all funny, is it?”
“There’s no way to unring the bell in our view,” Blanche said during a dramatic exchange with prosecutors.
Judge Juan Merchan shot down the mistrial most but acknowledged that “there were things that would have been better left unsaid,” and said he would strike some of her testimony from the record.
Daniels was the second witness called on Tuesday. She testified that she met Trump at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe in July 2006. Describing their first meeting as a “very brief encounter,” Daniels testified that she was 27 and remembered Trump being as old as her father — around 60.
The jury — which appeared focused intently on Daniels and her testimony — was then shown a picture of them together.
She said they later ran into each other at the club, and a man she later learned was Trump’s bodyguard told her Trump wanted to have dinner with her. She said she replied, “no, with an expletive in front.”
She did, however, get the bodyguard’s number, and said that later that day her publicist convinced her she should accept the invitation, telling her, “It’ll make a great story. He’s a business guy. What could possibly go wrong?”
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