Donald Trump demanded—and was denied—a mistrial on Tuesday, after adult film star Stormy Daniels testified about the alleged stomach-churning sex they had, which she says led to the 2016 hush money payment at the heart of the trial.
Describing the hotel room encounter that she says—and Trump denies—took place in 2006, Daniels told the jury that after chatting* for a while, she used the bathroom and returned to Trump stripped down to his T-shirt and boxers, which startled her. “I wasn’t expecting someone to be there, especially minus a lot of clothing,” she said. “I felt that the room spun in slow motion. I felt the blood basically leave my hands and feet.… I just thought, Oh my God. What did I misread to get here? Because the intention was pretty clear. Somebody stripped down in their underwear and posed on the bed, waiting for you.” Daniels testified that Trump “stood up between me and the door, not in a threatening manner,” and when she told him, “I’ve got to go,” he responded, “I thought we were getting somewhere.” From there, she said Tuesday, she did not remember many details, noting that it felt like she “blacked out,” but wasn’t drunk and hadn’t been drugged.
“Next thing I know I was on the bed,” Daniels told the jury, “the opposite side of the bed from where we’d been standing. I had my clothes and shoes off. We were in missionary position…I was staring at the ceiling. I didn’t know how I got there. I was trying to think about anything other than how I got there.” She added that Trump did not wear a condom, that the encounter was quick, and that afterwards, her “hands were shaking so hard I was having a hard time getting dressed.” Daniels said that she “felt ashamed that I didn’t stop [the sexual encounter] and I didn’t say no.” (My colleague, Dan Adler, has more from inside the courtroom.)
During a lunch break, Trump took to Truth Social to yell: “THE PROSECUTION, WHICH HAS NO CASE, HAS GONE TOO FAR. MISTRIAL!” His lawyers more formally requested a mistrial, arguing to Judge Juan Merchan: “All of this has nothing to do with this case, is extraordinarily prejudicial, and the only reason why the government asked those questions, besides pure embarrassment, is to inflame this jury to not look at the evidence that matters but to just look at this witness.” Assistant District Attorney Susan Hoffinger responded by noting that Merchan had not imposed official “guardrails” for Daniels’s testimony, and added that it contained no new details. “Her account includes the narrative of the events that precipitated the falsification of business records,” Hoffinger said. “This account is highly probative of the defendant’s intent.”
Merchan denied the request, saying, “I don’t think we have reached the point where a mistrial is in order.”
*In a conversation that included mention of Melania Trump, and Trump allegedly telling Daniels, “Oh, don’t worry about that, we don’t sleep in the same room.”
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