WASHINGTON — The alleged sexual encounter at the center of Donald Trump’s criminal hush-money trial received explicit attention in court last week when porn actor Stormy Daniels shared her story before an enthusiastic jury.
Daniels’ testimony about her time with Trump was by far the most anticipated moment of the trial, which is now entering its fourth week of testimony as prosecutors near the conclusion of their landmark case.
But it wasn’t all lust. Jurors in Manhattan saw evidence intended to directly link Trump to the hush money payments sent to Daniels in what prosecutors say was an attempt to buy her silence in the weeks before the 2016 presidential election.
An overview of what happened last week:
The jury listened for seven and a half hours as Daniels testified in detail about a 2006 sexual encounter she said she had with Trump, which he has denied.
Although she has previously shared details, a striking aspect of her testimony focused on her perception of a “balance of power” in the Lake Tahoe hotel suite where Daniels said she and Trump had sex.
With a bodyguard outside the suite, she described Trump as “bigger and blocking the way.” When the sex was over, she added, “It was really hard to put on my shoes; my hands were shaking so much.”
Daniels made it clear during questioning that she was not physically or verbally threatened to have sex and that she was not under the influence of drugs or alcohol at the time.
But defense attorneys were so unnerved by her characterization of the encounter that they filed for a mistrial. They told Judge Juan M. Merchan that her testimony was inflammatory and differed in important respects from what she had previously said. Her statements — she said she felt “lightheaded” and “blacked out” while with Trump — amounted to a “dog whistle” for rape, Trump attorney Todd Blanche said.
“The problem is that today she testified about consent, about danger. That is not the point of this case,” Blanche told the judge.
Merchan denied the motion for annulment, but also admitted that the testimony contained “some things that were better left unsaid.” The judge also rejected a separate request to allow Trump to respond publicly to Daniels’ testimony, despite a gag order banning him from making inflammatory extrajudicial comments about witnesses.
Given the salacious nature of Daniels’ testimony and the large number of objections from attorneys as she spoke, it was not surprising that she faced a combative cross-examination in what was by far the most heated back-and-forth of the trial to date it was. .
The Trump team portrayed Daniels as an unreliable witness while picking apart her personal life and profession.
There were questions about her previous claims of living in a haunted house and her participation in a 2018 strip club tour called “Making America Horny Again.” (For the record, Daniels said, she “hated” that slogan.) There were also suggestions that she could profit handsomely by continuing to share her account, even though the defense called it pure fiction.
“You made this all up, right?” asked Trump attorney Susan Necheles.
“No,” was the answer.
In some particularly caustic exchanges, Necheles invoked Daniels’ profession as a porn actor to cast doubt on her credibility, telling her at one point, “You have a lot of experience making false stories about sex appear, right? “
“Wow,” Daniels replied. “I wouldn’t put it that way. The sex in the films is very real. Just like what happened to me in that room.”
The lawyer also suggested that Daniels’ experience in the porn industry made it unlikely that she would have been shocked or frightened at the sight of Trump on the bed.
“You’ve acted and had sex in over 200 porn movies, right. And there are naked men and women having sex, including yourself, in those movies? Necheles asked. “But according to you, it was so disturbing to see a man in a T-shirt and boxer shorts sitting on a bed that you felt light-headed, the blood disappeared from your hands and feet and you felt like you were going to pass out.’
Trump’s extrajudicial comments about the jury and witnesses have earned him fines and repeated reprimands from a judge.
But his attitude in court last week led to a separate scolding of his lawyers.
At one point, Merchan called defense attorneys together for a quiet conversation at the bench, where he told them he had seen Trump react in inappropriate ways during Daniels’ testimony.
“I understand your client is upset at this point, but he’s swearing audibly, and he’s visually shaking his head, and that’s dismissive. It has the potential to intimidate the witness and the jury can see that,” Merchan said, according to a transcript of the proceedings.
“I’m talking to you here on the couch because I don’t want to embarrass him,” he added.
Beyond that exchange, Trump sought a separate $1,000 fine for comments about the case made during an interview last month, and was warned in the most direct manner yet of the possibility of jail time for further violations of Merchan’s silence order.
Jurors heard more than just salacious testimony. They also learned about the financial transactions at the heart of the case and saw payment checks with Trump’s signature.
Prosecutors tried to directly link Trump to the hush money payments to Daniels. They elicited testimony that most of the checks used to reimburse Michael Cohen, Trump’s then-lawyer and fixer, for the payments to Daniels came from Trump’s personal account — which bore his initials “DJT.”
Deborah Tarasoff, an accounts payable supervisor for the Trump Organization, said that once Trump became president, checks written from his personal account first had to be delivered via FedEx “to the White House so he could sign them.”
The checks would then return with Trump’s Sharpie signature. “I would take them apart, send the check and file the backup,” she said, meaning she would put the invoice into the Trump Organization’s filing system.
Still, she and another witness, Jeffrey McConney, a former Trump Organization controller, acknowledged that they had received no direct instructions from Trump himself about the ins and outs of the payments.
Tarasoff, for example, admitted that she did not interact much with Trump over the years and had no reason to believe he was hiding anything or that there was anything improper about the checks.
Jurors got a glimpse into the high-profile social life Trump enjoyed before becoming president, full of celebrities and bold names.
A redacted list of contacts that Trump’s aide at his firm sent to another Trump aide, representing people he often spoke to or who he might want to speak to, included former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, tennis player Serena Williams, casino magnate Steve Wynn, “The Apprentice producer Mark Burnett, ‘Saturday Night Live’ mastermind Lorne Michaels and NFL legends Tom Brady and Bill Belichick.
Their contact information was redacted, but the information nevertheless offered a glimpse into the celebrity universe inhabited by Trump.