I’ve changed my mind - Trump should be jailed, says Stormy

On the eve of Donald Trump’s fraud trial, the star witness is ready for a fight despite threats and intimidation - and reveals why she now wants him jailed

Stormy Daniels speaks US Federal Court in Manhattan with her then lawyer Michael Avenatti in April 2018. Picture: AFP

It is hard to know which detail of the legal proceedings starting on Monday (Tuesday AEST) in Manhattan is the more startling: that a former US president is facing a criminal trial for the first time in 248 years of independence; or that the star witness, and the woman on whom the historic case rests, is Stormy Daniels.

“He’s done so much worse that he should have been taken down [for] before,” the adult film star and director told me last year just after the news broke that Donald Trump would face charges. “I am fully aware of the insanity of it being a porn star. But it’s also ­poetic: this pussy grabbed back.”

Donald Trump campaigns in Schnecksville, Pennsylvania, on Saturday. Picture: AFP

The first of four criminal cases against 77-year-old Mr Trump – and the only one likely to take place before the presidential election, for which he is the presumed Republican candidate – hinges on the $US130,000 “hush money” payment made to Daniels, 45, by Mr Trump’s former lawyer ­Michael Cohen a week before the 2016 election.

In exchange for the money, Daniels was asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement, buying her silence on what happened ­between her and Mr Trump in a Nevada hotel room in 2006. An accomplished equestrian, she spent some of it, on a new horse trailer.

Mr Trump is facing 34 charges of fraud under campaign finance laws and is accused of falsifying business records: he said the initial payment to Mr Cohen was for legal expenses.

I first met Daniels in another hotel room, in New York in late 2018, shortly after she had published her memoir, Full Disclosure, with its damning verdict on her single sexual encounter with Trump (“I’d say the sex lasted two or three minutes. It may have been the least impressive sex I’d ever had”) and her – sadly – unforgettable description of his penis (“like the mushroom character in Mario Kart”).

She regretted that night, she told me. “And if I could go back I would say no.”

Donald Trump with wife Melania. The former president has ­always maintained that he never had sex with Stormy Daniels. Picture: AFP

Mr Trump, for his part, has ­always maintained that he never had sex with Daniels.

When it emerged in March last year that Trump was to be charged, I called her.

“It’s vindication,” she said, sounding more cautious than triumphant. “It’s monumental and epic, and I’m proud.” She heard about the indictment, she told me, “while I was sitting on a horse named Redemption”. But she added: “It’s bittersweet. It’s going to continue to divide people and bring them up in arms. It’s going to cause violence, and there’s going to be injuries and death.”

She had been subject to threats and intimidation since she spoke out against Mr Trump in early 2018. “The first time it was ‘gold digger’, ‘slut’, ‘whore’, ‘liar’, whatever. And this time it’s, ‘I’m gonna murder you’.”

Donald Trump with Stormy Daniels, in 2006.

Was she frightened? “For the first time ever, yeah,” she said. “It’s especially scary because Trump himself is inciting violence and encouraging it.”

Daniels and I spoke again, at length, in November. She had ­received confirmation that day that she would be called as a witness in the trial.

“I was afraid for a moment that they were not going to call me to the stand,” she said.

“And I think that it would have, inadvertently perhaps, painted a picture that I was untrustworthy or not articulate or not a credible witness. That would have been a slap in the face.”

Daniels is difficult for Mr Trump to dismiss as a weaponised Democrat since she is a registered Republican (though she maintains she did not vote in 2016). She is also hard to intimidate. “Twitter is my favourite sport,” she laughed.

And yet Mr Trump has not stopped trying. In late January Daniels received an order from one of Mr Trump’s lawyers that she sit for a deposition about her ­finances and submit a long form listing her assets. It was, she ­believes, a clear attempt to unsettle her. “I am fully prepared to go to jail before doing this,” she ­responded.

Now Americans are confronting the prospect that the former president could go to jail – during an election campaign. Having previously said that she did not ­believe Mr Trump’s crimes against her were worthy of incarceration, Daniels has changed her mind.

“He’s not above the law,” she said in November. “What precedent does that set for people in the future, like, ‘Well, he got away with it’? It’s a set-up for anarchy. So, yes, I want him to go to jail now – ­because (otherwise) I can’t imagine who comes after him.”

THE SUNDAY TIMES