Since Donald Trump’s trial began in Manhattan last month, there have been several slow days. When an accountant or executive assistant has testified in a case that, at its core, revolves around the minutiae of business records, the lines outside the courthouse have not stretched as far as they did when lawyers delivered their opening statements. Even David Pecker, the colorful former National Enquirer publisher who testified in the first days of the proceedings about hush money payments, is not quite a household name.
But Stormy Daniels is a household name. The news that she would take the witness stand on Tuesday came only a few hours before she began testifying—not enough notice to summon the crowd that might arrive to see the porn star elaborate on her claim to a 2006 tryst with Trump. On Thursday morning, with Daniels’s testimony set to continue, Jake Tapper and Jeanine Pirro were among the group, the largest and most feverish so far, waiting to get into Manhattan Criminal Court. Trump, whose entourage has varied in size and enthusiasm throughout the trial, arrived with Florida senator Rick Scott.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records in order to conceal paying Daniels for her silence about her claim. While the matter of their alleged affair—he has denied sleeping with her—is not, strictly speaking, what’s being litigated during these proceedings, it has dictated their general tenor: a sex scandal involving a former and perhaps future president. Daniels wore a green shirt under a black sweater on Thursday as she spoke in front of Trump again. After a few nervous moments during her first day of testimony, she seemed to have settled into a rhythm for the second and final round.
“Everyone wanted to publish the story,” Daniels told defense attorney Susan Necheles, laughing a bit. The cross-examination amounted to the testiest day of the trial so far, with Necheles continually seeking to poke holes in Daniels’s account and question her motives. But Daniels was lightly defiant and seemed game to spar. Part of the defense that Trump’s lawyers have been setting up is the idea that, in arranging for the payment to Daniels, he was seeking not to interfere with the 2016 presidential election but merely to protect his family from her allegation becoming public. Necheles asked Daniels about Trump’s intentions.
“I wouldn’t know what he wanted to protect,” Daniels replied, and turned to the jury to offer an exasperated shrug.
Daniels, like Trump, has a knack for spectacle, and she was leaning back in her chair when she pointed to what she had in common with the former president. Necheles, careful to refer to her client only as “President Trump,” pressed Daniels about selling merch related to her claim about an affair and making herself into a brand.
“Not unlike Mr. Trump,” Daniels said.
It was one of several quips that she offered over the course of a winning display. “Nobody would ever want to publicly say” that they had sex with Trump, Daniels said.
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