Stormy Daniels grilled on money made off Trump story — and experience with ghosts
Donald Trump’s lawyer sought to portray the porn star as a fabulist who speaks to ghosts, and as a money-driven hustler.
Donald Trump’s lawyer on Thursday sought to portray porn star Stormy Daniels as a fabulist who speaks to ghosts and a hustler who had made millions off her years-old story of sex with the former president.
Susan Necheles rattled off how Daniels had made money: a $130,000 hush-money payment; a book; #TeamStormy merchandise; and a strip-club tour called “Make America Horny Again,” advertised with a photo of her and Trump.
She noted that Daniels, 45 years old, had written and directed about 150 sex films. “You have a lot of experience in making phony stories about sex appear to be real, right?” Necheles asked.
Daniels said she wouldn’t put it that way. But if she had made up the encounter with Trump, she said, it would have been a lot better.
Trump, who is now 77, sat hunched over and frowning and periodically looked at Daniels.
Necheles also pointed jurors to Daniels’s work as a medium and self-described paranormal investigator. Daniels has said that while living in a New Orleans house that she thought to be haunted, spirits attacked her boyfriend and held him underwater.
Daniels told jurors that some indications of paranormal activity at the house were later attributed to a giant opossum.
Thursday was the second and final day on the stand for Daniels. Earlier, more than 100 members of the public lined up outside the courthouse to get a seat inside. Before dawn, those waiting played the card game Euchre, took turns making coffee runs and swapped thoughts about the former president. About half a dozen snagged seats in the courtroom.
Daniels’s testimony was in some ways superfluous to the case; Trump is accused of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records for covering up a payment intended to silence her. Her freewheeling appearance in court could ultimately bolster prosecutors’ narrative by illustrating how her story, if public, could have battered his 2016 campaign.
“It paints starkly exactly why Trump didn’t want any of this to come out, ” said Daniel Horwitz, a former Manhattan prosecutor uninvolved in the case. “Look at this woman. If you are running for president, do you want her out in the public talking about you?”
Earlier this week, Daniels testified that she met Trump at a 2006 celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe. While the pair had dinner, Trump became increasingly rude, she said, and she took a magazine with his face on the cover and swatted him. “Right on the butt,” she told the jury.
Later in his hotel room, Daniels said, she went to the bathroom, where she snooped around a leather toiletry bag that included Pert Plus, Old Spice and a golden manicure set. When she came out, Trump was lying on the bed in boxers and a T-shirt, she said. She told jurors she stared at the ceiling as the pair briefly had sex. Trump has denied the encounter.
Thursday’s cross examination at times grew contentious, with Daniels accusing Necheles of reaching inaccurate conclusions. The two women clashed over what exactly Daniels meant when she joked on social media about being the best person to flush an “orange turd” down the toilet, referring to Trump.
Necheles said Daniels had claimed she would be instrumental in putting Trump in jail. “You’re putting words in my mouth,” retorted Daniels.
The Trump lawyer argued that Daniels’s account of sex with Trump wasn’t only inconsistent but also didn’t make sense for a woman who had seen hundreds of people naked.
“According to you, seeing a man sitting on a bed in a T-shirt and boxer shorts was so upsetting that you got lightheaded,” Necheles said. Daniels said she hadn’t expected to see Trump in his underwear.
Other witnesses Thursday included a Trump Organisation bookkeeper and an employee of HarperCollins Publishers, who read passages from one of Trump’s books.
White House executive assistant Madeleine Westerhout testified about Trump’s contact with figures in the alleged scheme, including his personal lawyer Michael Cohen and tabloid publisher David Pecker, after he became president.
Trump smiled at Westerhout throughout much of her testimony, which also touched on his fondness for Sharpies, Pentel felt tip pens and certain punctuation.
“He liked to use the Oxford comma,” Westerhout told the jury.
The Wall Street Journal
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