NEW YORK — The jury mulling former President Trump’s fate in his hush money criminal case heard the most risque details yet during trial when Stormy Daniels took the stand for her highly anticipated testimony Tuesday.
For hours, the New Yorkers listened to the raunchy story that the porn actor has recounted in interviews and even a documentary: that she had sex with Trump in his hotel suite in 2006 and a decade later sold the story to his then-fixer, Michael Cohen. Trump denies the sexual encounter.
Daniels’s testimony became so crude that, by the afternoon, Trump’s lawyers demanded a mistrial. Even as Judge Juan Merchan sympathized with their concerns and criticized prosecutors, he rejected the motion and put Daniels back on the stand.
“I do think some things were better unsaid,” the judge noted.
Her testimony, now under cross-examination, will continue when the trial resumes Thursday.
Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records over an alleged repayment scheme to Cohen after the former Trump Organization attorney sent Daniels $130,000 to stay quiet about her story before the 2016 election. He pleaded not guilty and has denied any wrongdoing.
Daniels was called to the courtroom just as prosecutors started shifting the case’s storyline away from the salacious hush money arrangements to the actual documents undergirding Trump’s charges.
Suited in all black, Daniels appeared disheveled when she entered the courtroom in the morning, nervously smiling as she quickly shuffled to the witness stand. When she sat down, she put on thick-framed glasses before swearing to tell the truth. Trump whispered with his attorney before turning his attention to her testimony.
The two had once again come face-to-face nearly two decades after the alleged tryst.
Most of the details Daniels provided Tuesday had already been widely publicized. But her story, now told under oath, left little to the imagination for the New York jury. She told them about sex positions during her alleged encounter with Trump and indicated he didn’t use a condom. Daniels even described spanking the former president with a rolled-up magazine.
She spoke quickly — a nervous energy emanating from the witness stand, leading to repeated requests for her to slow down — as she detailed arriving in Trump’s lavish hotel suite that was “three times the size” of her apartment at the time. The duo was at a Lake Tahoe celebrity golf tournament in 2006, and Daniels said she thought they would be having dinner.
Daniels recalled entering a foyer adorned with black-and-white tile floors and a “big, beautiful” wooden table topped with a “fancy, big” flower arrangement.
She detailed that Trump emerged from another room wearing silk or satin pajamas.
“I said, ‘Does Mr. Hefner know you stole his pajamas?’” she told jurors with a laugh, referencing the famous Playboy Magazine founder, Hugh Hefner.
Jurors were not as animated during her testimony as they were in earlier parts of the trial — most maintaining straight faces, some appearing tired and others taking notes.
Although many watched Daniels, even some of her more intimate details about the alleged encounter did not seem to captivate the jury like other witnesses did.
Trump often stared straight ahead, looking into the distance for several minutes before returning his gaze to the stand. He sometimes tilted his head side to side and appeared frustrated.
His son, Eric Trump, was also in the courtroom for the racy testimony, frequently turning his attention away from the monitors or Daniels to examine his phone.
Before the trial, Trump’s lawyers unsuccessfully attempted to prevent the jury from ever hearing from Daniels, and the defense Tuesday morning urged the judge to keep out many of the salacious specifics.
Prosecutor Susan Hoffinger agreed they would omit some details — like descriptions of genitalia — but insisted it was necessary for Daniels to walk through the alleged sexual encounter as the jury assesses whether she is credible.
Daniels gave a comprehensive account. She gave emphatic answers to prosecutors’ questions with her hands, and when asked how Trump had laid on the bed that night, she offered her best impression of the pose — throwing her arms and a leg into the air.
By lunch, the judge wasn’t pleased. Merchan appeared exasperated, criticizing prosecutors for going into too much detail and pleading with the witness to not wander beyond the questions.
“Please just keep the answers short. Just listen to the question and answer the question,” Merchan told Daniels.
After Merchan’s admonishment, Daniels became notably more subdued, attempting to answer questions in less detail when warranted. Several defense objections came as Daniels expressed discomfort or shame about her sexual encounter with Trump.
But after the lunch break, Trump’s lawyers had had enough. They demanded the judge grant a mistrial, the first such motion in the case, asserting that jurors were hearing inappropriate details.
“The guardrails for this witness, answering questions from the government, were just thrown to the side,” Trump attorney Todd Blanche said.
The judge again expressed his frustration, but he denied the motion after briefly hearing arguments. Merchan said the proper remedy was to provide jurors an instruction that limits how they can use some of Daniels’s testimony in their deliberations.
“I don’t believe we are at the point where a mistrial is warranted,” he ruled from the bench.
When it came time for cross-examination in the afternoon, Trump attorney Susan Necheles was tasked with painting Daniels as an unreliable witness, leading to several heated exchanges between the two women.
Asked whether she hates Trump, Daniels responded affirmatively, “Yes.” And when questioned over whether she wants him to go to jail, she replied: “I want him to be held accountable.”
Though Daniels’s recounting of 2006 dominated in the courtroom, the cable networks that had been providing a constant play-by-play analysis cut away when the porn actor began walking through her alleged sexual encounter with Trump.
They shifted to briefly cover President Biden, the other 2024 front-runner for president, who at the very same time was stepping to a podium at the Capitol to decry antisemitism at a Holocaust remembrance event.
Story updated 5:55 p.m.