(NEW YORK) — Stormy Daniels took the stand Tuesday in Donald Trump’s secret trial, describing to jurors a sexual encounter the porn star says she had with him in 2006 that resulted in her being paid to remain silent during the presidential race 10 years later.
Jurors seemed riveted as Daniels, despite repeated objections from defense lawyers and occasional warnings from the judge, offered a detailed and sometimes graphic account of an encounter that Trump denied. Trump looked straight ahead as Daniels entered the courtroom, later shaking her head and whispering to her lawyers as she testified.
The testimony was by far the most anticipated spectacle in a trial that alternated between tabloid elements and dry record-keeping explanations. The court appearance of a porn actress who says she had an intimate encounter with a former U.S. president adds to a long series of historic breakthroughs in the case, which was already fraught with tawdry allegations of sex, bribes and cover-ups. The situation is unfolding as the presumptive Republican nominee makes another bid for the White House.
His statements are central to the case because in the final weeks of Trump’s 2016 Republican presidential campaign, his then-personal lawyer and mediator, Michael Cohen, paid Daniels $130,000 to keep silent about what she says was a sexual encounter. strange and unexpected with Trump on a celebrity golf outing in Lake Tahoe in July 2006. Trump pleaded not guilty.
Led by cross-examination from a prosecutor, Daniels described how an initial meeting at a golf tournament where they discussed the adult film industry evolved into a “brief” sexual encounter that she said Trump initiated after inviting her to dinner and return to your hotel suite.
She said she did not feel physically or verbally threatened, although she knew his bodyguard was outside the suite and that there was what she perceived as a power imbalance: Trump “was bigger and was blocking the way.”
After she finished, she said, “It was really hard to get my shoes because my hands were shaking so much.”
“He said, ‘Oh, it was great. Let’s be together again, dear bunch,’” Daniels continued. “I just wanted to leave.”
In the years since the encounter was publicized, Daniels has emerged as a vocal antagonist of Trump, sharing her story in a book and on television and criticizing the former president with mocking and derogatory jabs. But there was no precedent for Tuesday’s events, when she came face to face with Trump and was asked, in an austere courtroom, to describe her experiences to a jury weighing whether to convict a former American president of serious crimes for first time in history.
She said she met Trump because the adult film studio she worked for at the time sponsored one of the holes on the golf course. They talked about the adult film industry and their directing skills as Trump’s group passed by. The celebrity real estate developer noted that she must be “the smart one” if she were making movies, Daniels recalled.
Later, in an area known as the “gift room” where famous golfers collected gift bags and swag, Trump remembered her as “the smart one” and asked her if she wanted to go to dinner, Daniels said.
Daniels testified that he accepted Trump’s invitation because he wanted to get out of a planned dinner with his company colleagues. She said her then-press secretary suggested in a phone call that Trump’s invitation was a good excuse to avoid the work dinner and that it would “make a great story” and perhaps help her career.
“What could go wrong?” she remembered the publicist saying.
After several discussions with the judge and Trump’s lawyers out of view of the jurors, prosecutor Susan Hoffinger handled her questioning about the encounter cautiously, instructing her to keep her answers brief and free of extra details. Judge Juan M. Merchan repeatedly rejected Daniels’ attempts to describe the encounter more vividly, removing several of his responses from official court records.
Testimony so far has made clear that at the time of the payment to Daniels, Trump and his campaign were reeling from the Oct. 7, 2016 publication of never-before-seen footage from 2005’s “Access Hollywood” in which he boasted of having grabbed women’s genitals without their permission.
The candidate spoke with Cohen and Hope Hicks, his campaign’s press secretary, by phone the next day as they tried to limit the damage caused by the tape and keep their alleged affairs out of the press, according to testimony.
Cohen paid Daniels after her lawyer at the time, Keith Davidson, indicated she was willing to make official statements to the National Enquirer or on television confirming a sexual encounter with Trump. National Enquirer editor Dylan Howard alerted editor David Pecker and then, at Pecker’s direction, told Cohen that Daniels was agitating to make allegations of hers public, prosecutors said. Daniels had previously tried to sell her story to another celebrity gossip magazine, Life & Style, in 2011.
Daniels’ testimony was a stark turnaround from Monday, when the jury heard from two witnesses, including a former Trump Organization controller, who provided a rote but vital recitation of how the company refunded payments that were supposed to prevent stories from being released. embarrassing situations arose and were then recorded. as legal expenses in a way that Manhattan prosecutors say breaks the law.
Jeffrey McConney’s testimony provided an important building block for prosecutors trying to pull back the curtain on what they say was a cover-up of corporate records of transactions designed to protect Trump’s Republican presidential candidacy during a crucial period of the race. It focused on Cohen’s $130,000 payment to Daniels and the subsequent refund Cohen received.
McConney and another witness testified that the refund checks were taken from Trump’s personal account.
McConney acknowledged during questioning that Trump never asked him to record the reimbursements as legal expenses nor discussed the matter with him. Another witness, Deborah Tarasoff, an accounts payable supervisor for the Trump Organization, said under questioning that she did not get permission from Trump himself to cut the checks in question and admitted that she had no reason to believe Trump was hiding anything.
Prosecutors continue to move toward their star witness, Cohen, who pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the hush money payments. He is expected to be subjected to a scathing cross-examination by defense lawyers seeking to undermine his credibility with jurors.
Trump is charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection with hush money payments. The trial is the first of his four criminal cases to reach a jury.
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Tucker reported from Washington.
This story originally appeared on Time.com read the full story
