Here’s why her testimony is raising some eybrows.
Adult film star Stormy Daniels met Donald Trump face-to-face as she testified against him in his hush money trial. In a dramatic testimony, she recounted having sex with the former president in 2006.
Daniels spent much of her testimony offering very specific details of the alleged sexual encounter that prompted the payments in the first place. For instance, the jury learned that Trump didn’t wear a condom, and as she recounted her vivid descriptions, he avoided looking in her direction.
During her second and final day on the stand, defense lawyers tried to poke holes in her credibility. At one point, Trump’s attorney Susan Necheles asked the actress: “You made this all up, right?” Daniels pushed back by saying, “if that story was untrue, I would have written it to be a lot better.”
Her unfiltered account created an uproar in the courtroom, with Trump’s legal team calling twice for a mistrial. But New York Judge Juan Merchan denied both of these requests, pointing out that his lawyers had several chances to object to questions that led to some damning information and chose not to. The former president wasn’t happy with these decision, calling them a “disgrace.”
Daniels isn’t the first witness to take the stand, but she is the most high-profile as the woman at the center of the hush money trial. In case you need to catch up, here’s what you should know about Daniels and her connection to the case.
Who is Stormy Daniels?
Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, told jurors that she started appearing in adult films at age 23, before moving to direct more than 150 films that won porn industry awards. But over the years, she has made headlines over her legal battles with Trump. In 2018, Daniels tried to sue the former president for defamation, and when she lost an appeal to challenge the decision, she was forced to pay $120,000 of the former president’s legal fees.
At the center of their feud is Daniels’ claim that she had an affair with him in 2006 — right after the birth of his son Barron with his wife Melania Trump. Then, just weeks before the 2016 election, Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 to keep the alleged affair a secret. (Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison for violating campaign finance law after admitting to making these payments.)
During Tuesday’s trial, Daniels told a New York jury that she was determined to keep the incident private after being threatened by a strange man in a parking lot in 2011. This was the same year that the gossip magazine In Touch contacted her offering her $15,000 for her story about Trump, which she took part in. Though the story never ran, it later appeared on a gossip website. “My motivation wasn’t money, it was to get the story out,” she said.
Daniels’ story remained largely unknown for several years, and it didn’t resurface again until the Wall Street Journal reported on his other hush money payoff to Playboy model Karen McDougal, whom he also allegedly slept with when he was married. Daniels said she declined to comment when the newspaper reached out because she had signed a nondisclosure agreement with Cohen.
While Trump has denied the affairs, he has continuously shifted his story on the hush money payment to Daniels. After initially claiming to not know about them, Trump later said he found out about the payment after the fact and reimbursed Cohen $420,000 for the funds.
But prosecutors argue that these payments violated a New York law barring illegal conspiracies to “promote” a candidate and that the reimbursement to Cohen was falsified in Trump’s business records to cover up the illegal payment.
When did Stormy Daniels and Trump first meet?
Daniels said she first met Trump in July 2006 at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe, Nev. that was sponsored by an adult-film production company that she was working for at the time.
After the two were introduced to each other, she said Trump’s bodyguard invited her to have dinner with the former president. But when she arrived at his penthouse hotel room, she said he greeted her in his silk or satin pajamas. “I immediately made fun of him,” she recalled during his testimony.
Daniels said Trump eventually got dressed and the two had dinner. She remembered being initially impressed with him asking about the business of the adult film industry rather than the “sexy stuff,” and he suggested putting her on his TV show, The Apprentice. She also revealed that she “spanked” Trump “right on the butt” with a copy of one of his magazines.
After a while, she got up to go to the bathroom, and when she came back she was startled to find Trump on his bed in a T-shirt and boxer shorts. Daniels said he then got between her and the door. “There was an imbalance of power for sure,” she said. “He was bigger and blocking the way, but I was not threatened.”
At times, the encounter sounded nonconsensual. For instance, Daniels said she didn’t remember many details because she “blacked out.” But she said their sex was “brief” and she remembered being concerned that the former president didn’t wear a condom. “I felt ashamed that I didn’t stop it and I didn’t say no,” she told the courtroom.
What else did Stormy Daniels say in her testimony?
After their alleged sexual encounter, Daniels said that Trump proceeded to call her weekly and sometimes she would put him on speaker for her friends to hear.
“We thought it was funny,” she said. “Dozens and dozens and dozens of people heard me talking to him.” She said she only kept in touch with him because she thought she might land a spot on his reality show, The Apprentice like he suggested during their dinner.
Daniels said she saw him again during a 2007 meeting in Los Angeles, where he tried to make a move on her but she rebuffed him by telling him she was on her period.
Finally, Trump called her up one day and told her she couldn’t appear on his TV show and continued to reach out, but she said she stopped responding because she didn’t want to see him again.
In subsequent years, Daniels said her career picked up despite not landing a spot on Trump’s reality show and she had a cameo in the hit comedy, The 40-Year-Old Virgin. She also said she moved to Texas, had a daughter, and “became a nationally-ranked equestrian.”
The defense, on the other hand, has tried portray Daniels as a gold digger, who profited off of claims of sex with Trump. While Daniels admitted that getting money for her story was important to her, she maintained that “I never asked for money from President Trump.”
During her cross-examination, Trump’s lawyers also tried sought to find discrepancies in her story and accused her of lying. “You’re trying to make me say it changed, but it hasn’t changed,” Daniels said in response to a question from Necheles.
