A lawyer for Donald Trump continued to hammer away this morning at altering particulars over time in Stormy Daniels’ accounts of a 2006 sexual encounter with Trump — and obtained loads of pushback from the grownup entertainer turned high-profile witness in Trump’s hush cash trial.
During fast fireplace, back-and-forth sparring that lasted nearly three hours, Susan Necheles additionally mentioned that Daniels — after accumulating $130,000 for a non-disclosure settlement — eagerly bought her memoir, hawked merchandise, appeared on a actuality TV present, sat for a documentary movie, marketed herself as a religious medium, and toured as an grownup dancer utilizing her “supposed” sexual encounter with Trump because the hook.
Necheles estimated that Daniels had made $1 million or extra from assorted ventures after turning into identified for an adulterous sexual encounter with Trump, and he or she mentioned Daniels’ as soon as instructed a author for Slate “you either wanted money or you were going to hurt him politically.”
Daniels shot again that she was simply doing her job and paying off the “extraordinary” authorized payments she had amassed by tangling with Trump. She testified that she “hated” the advertising and marketing for a U.S. tour of strip golf equipment, billed as “Make America Horny Again” — a play on Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan — though she did submit the promotional posters to her Instagram.
Necheles pressed Daniels on discrepancies between previous accounts and her testimony on Tuesday, together with whether or not Trump personally invited her to dinner at his Lake Tahoe resort suite in the summertime 2006, whether or not they truly broke bread within the resort suite, and whether or not Daniels felt too powerless to refuse intercourse with Trump that night time.
Necheles mentioned that Daniels has carried out in or directed a whole lot of pornographic movies, but testified on Tuesday that she felt “lightheaded” on the sight of Trump ready in mattress for her in his boxer shorts and a t-shirt.
Daniels replied that her response was to stepping out the lavatory and unexpectedly discovering a person twice her age half undressed.
Necheles additionally questioned Daniels’ testimony about “an imbalance of power” between her and Trump within the moments earlier than the sexual encounter. “You wrote that you had made him your bitch in your book,” Necheles mentioned, referring to a passage of Daniels’ 2018 memoir, Full Disclosure, during which she described standing as much as Trump throughout a prolonged dialog that preceded the sexual encounter.
“Ma’am,’” Necheles continued, “You claim ‘I made him my bitch’ but ‘I can’t say no to having sex with him?’”
A grand jury in Manhattan indicted the previous U.S. president on March 30, 2023, charging that Trump conspired to affect the 2016 election by falsifying enterprise data so as conceal reimbursing lawyer Michael Cohen for the $130,000 that Cohen paid to Daniels for her silence. Necheles pulled up a tweet from that day, during which Daniels wrote about ingesting champagne and directed different tweeters to her merch website.
“And that was you shilling your merchandise, right?” Necheles demanded.
“That is me doing my job,” Daniels replied.
Later, on re-direct by Assistant District Attorney Susan Hoffinger, Daniels mentioned she by no means testified earlier than the grand jury.
“So you had nothing to do with the charges in this case?” Hoffinger requested, a question that drew a swift objection from Necheles — overruled by Judge Juan Merchan.
“I did not,” Daniels replied.
Asked by Hoffinger if the entire Trump expertise was a “net positive or net negative in your life,” Daniels paused and mentioned, “Negative.” Earlier, she mentioned she has needed to rent safety, take further precautions for her daughter, transfer twice, and pay attorneys charges linked to her try to interrupt the non-disclosure settlement.
Hoffinger additionally sought to make clear testimony about Daniels’ tweets, noting that she was generally responding to hostile commenters. When Daniels posted that she would “dance down the street” when Trump is “selected” for jail, it was a reply to a Tweeter calling her “a disgusting degenerate prostitute” who “accepts money to Frame an innocent man,” that means Trump, who the Tweeter predicted will probably be “selected by a landslide in 2024.”
Hoffinger additionally mentioned that in Daniels’ failed lawsuit to get out of the non-disclosure settlement, Trump’s legal professional, in court docket papers from June of 2018, confirmed that Trump had reimbursed Cohen.
Daniels left the stand after two days of testimony. She was adopted by Rebecca Manochio, an accounting worker on the Trump Organization, who traced a data path exhibiting that Trump’s checks in 2017 — which prosecutors say included unlawful reimbursements to Cohen — went first by FedEx to Trump’s bodyguard, Keith Schiller, at a house deal with in Washington, D.C., earlier than being despatched again with Trump’s signature.
Daniels, in her testimony, mentioned that she met Schiller on the Lake Tahoe movie star golf event in 2006 the place the sexual encounter occurred, and that it was Schiller who prolonged the dinner invitation.
With Necheles accusing her of telling lies to become profitable, Daniels defended the reality of her account, saying that “if that story was untrue, I would have written it to be a lot better.”