Key takeaways from Stormy Daniels’ testimony in Trump hush money trial
NEW YORK — Donald Trump paid porn actor Stormy Daniels for her silence before the 2016 election. Now he is being forced to confront her testimony about their alleged sexual encounter in the middle of a new presidential campaign.
Daniels took the witness stand Tuesday in his hush-money criminal trial, bringing the presumptive Republican presidential nominee face to face with the woman whose story he tried to bury years ago. Trump denies having sex with her.
It is the biggest spectacle yet in the first criminal trial of a former US president, which is now in its third week of testimony in Manhattan.
Here are some takeaways from Daniels’ testimony so far:
Daniels is at the center of the case because she was paid $130,000 in the final weeks of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign to keep quiet about what she said was an awkward and unexpected sexual encounter with Trump a decade earlier. He says the meeting never took place.
Prosecutors say Trump paid Daniels as part of a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 campaign by burying negative stories about him. His lawyers have tried to show that Trump was trying to protect his reputation and family — not his campaign — by shielding them from embarrassing stories about his personal life.
Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, said she grew up poor in Louisiana and originally wanted to become a veterinarian. She danced ballet growing up and started exotic dancing when she was in high school, she testified.
Daniels told the judges that she began appearing in adult films at the age of 23 and soon began working behind the camera, eventually directing more than 150 films and winning a string of awards in the porn industry.
Daniels testified about first meeting Trump in 2006 during a celebrity golf outing in Lake Tahoe. The porn film studio she worked for at the time sponsored one of the holes on the golf course.
Daniels testified that she saw Trump again after the round of golf in what was known as the “gift room,” an area where the celebrity golfers collected gift bags and swag. There, she said, he remembered her as “the smart one” and asked her if she wanted to go to dinner. Trump’s bodyguard took her number, she told jurors.
Daniels said she accepted Trump’s invitation because she wanted to leave a planned dinner with her pornographic film company colleagues, some of whom she “didn’t want around — catfighting,” she said with a chuckle.
She said her then-publicist suggested in a phone call that Trump’s invitation was a good excuse to bypass the work dinner and would “make a great story” and perhaps help her career.
“What could go wrong?” she remembered the publicist’s saying.
Trump showed no dramatic changes in his behavior when Daniels took the stand, but there were signs of what appeared to be discomfort as the former president and current presidential candidate heard testimony about his alleged extramarital sexual encounter.
The former president started the day by posting — and later deleting — a comment on his social media network complaining that he had “only recently been told who the witness is today” and falsely saying his lawyers didn’t have time to to prepare. He has been placed under a gag order that prevents him from commenting publicly on witnesses, jurors and some others involved in the case.
As Daniels entered the courtroom, Trump stared ahead, turned his head slightly in her direction and then looked at her as she walked to the witness stand. He frequently whispered to his attorney as she began testifying. Trump later showed an apparent pained expression as she recounted details of the dinner she said they shared, sometimes mumbling to the lawyers on either side of him.
Before Daniels took the stand, Trump’s lawyers tried to prevent her from testifying about the details of her alleged sexual encounter with Trump, saying it was irrelevant in “a books and records case.”
Prosecutor Susan Hoffinger countered that the details are important to support Daniels’ credibility, which has been questioned by the defense. The prosecutor assured Judge Juan Merchan that the description of the alleged sexual act would be “very basic” and “would not include any details about genitals.”
At one point, Merchan cautioned the accuser about the “level of detail” she elicited from Daniels, saying there was no need to elaborate on the design of the hotel room floor or the various topics covered in her conversation were discussed with Trump.
“The level of detail we’re going into here is just unnecessary,” Merchan said.
Trump’s son Eric, who was in court with his father on Tuesday, denounced the proceedings in a post on
“I have a front row seat trying to figure out how this garbage from 20 years ago is related to ‘legal’ bills filed by a personal attorney who has long been booked as ‘legal’ fees,” he wrote.
Daniels took the stand a day after testimony that was more mechanical but just as important to the plaintiffs’ case: a recitation from former Trump Organization controller Jeffrey McConney about how the company reimbursed payments allegedly intended to prevent that embarrassing stories emerged during Trump’s 2016 presidential election. campaign. They were recorded as legal fees in a manner that Manhattan prosecutors said was contrary to the law.
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Whitehurst reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Michael Sisak, Jennifer Peltz, Jake Offenhartz and Alanna Durkin Richer contributed to this story.