Cross-examination of Stormy Daniels grows testy during Trump trial

After court adjourned for the day, Trump told reporters in the hallway of the courthouse that it was a “very revealing day” of testimony, arguing it was helpful to his case.

“So this was a very big day, a very revealing day as you see a case that’s totally falling apart,” Trump said. “They have nothing on books and records, and even something that should be very little relationship to the case is just a disaster for the DA.”

— Brett Samuels

Merchan dismissed the jury for the day, following hours of salacious and sometimes heated testimony from Daniels.

The porn actress is expected to resume her testimony, under cross-examination from Trump’s attorneys, on Thursday.

— Ella Lee

Trump was asked during a brief break as he reentered the courtroom how the cross-examination by his defense team was going of Stormy Daniels, to which he responded “very well.”

— Brett Samuels

Necheles’s cross-examination of Daniels has been largely aimed at portraying her as an unreliable witness.

The Trump attorney is attempting to poke holes in Daniels’s story, at one point suggesting Daniels’s “whole story” about being threatened to keep quiet is “not true.” Necheles suggested the man who allegedly approached her “did not exist.”

“He absolutely existed,” Daniels said.

“No he didn’t,” Necheles retorted.

Necheles has also cast doubt on various moments in Daniels’s timeline, implying they are misremembered.

— Ella Lee

Necheles pressed Daniels about whether she has made money off of telling her story about her alleged affair with Trump.

“I am making money by telling my story about what happened to me,” Daniels told Necheles.

When asked if telling that story has made her “a lot of money,” Daniels told Necheles, “It also cost me a lot of money.”

— Lauren Sforza

Necheles pressed Daniels on a tweet from Nov. 9, 2022, where she wrote: “I don’t have to pay him shit and I’ll never give that orange turd a dime.”

Necheles asked if she was making fun of how Trump looked, and Daniels agreed that she was. When asked if she called him names all the time, she agreed.

“He made fun of me first!” Daniels said.

Daniels said earlier in the testimony that she had not paid any legal fees yet to Trump in a separate case because it “wasn’t fair.”

— Lauren Sforza

Necheles’s cross-examination of Daniels is off to a testy start.

When asked if it was “correct” to say that Daniels hates Trump, Daniels responded: “Yes.”

When asked if she wanted him to go to jail, Daniels responded, “I want him to be held accountable.”

At one point, Necheles seemed to raise her voice to Daniels when asking about why she had not paid money owed to Trump for legal fees in a separate case that has been dismissed.

“You didn’t pay anything out of your pocket, did you? You didn’t take anything out of your pocket and pay it to Donald Trump did you,” Necheles asked, before an objection was raised.

— Lauren Sforza

Prosecutors concluded their direct questioning of Daniels just after 3 p.m.

Now, Trump’s team will cross-examine Daniels.

— Lauren Sforza

Daniels testified that she hasn’t paid Trump’s legal fees in a separate case because she does not consider it to be “fair.”

She also said she doesn’t “have the means” to pay the judgment.

Daniels sued Trump for defamation in April 2018, a few months after their alleged sexual encounter went public, over Trump questioning her credibility on social media.

The lawsuit was ultimately dismissed under the First Amendment, and Daniels was ordered to pay Trump’s legal fees.

Daniels has said her attorney at the time, Michael Avenatti, had filed the lawsuit without her permission.

— Ella Lee

Daniels described Trump’s onetime personal attorney, Michael Cohen, as “the fixer” in her testimony Tuesday.

Defense attorneys have asked several witnesses questions aiming to distance Cohen from his well-established title — an effort Daniels’s testimony could hinder.

— Ella Lee

Daniels testified that her life descended into “chaos” after The Wall Street Journal published an article in January 2018 detailing her encounter with Trump.

She said the story “blew my cover,” causing friends and family members to ask questions and her daughter to be “ostracized from play groups.”

The Wall Street Journal published news of the hush money payment nearly one year after Trump took office.

Read the WSJ article at issue here.

— Ella Lee

Stormy Daniels has retaken the stand after the lunch break.

Hoffinger, one of the prosecutors from the district attorney’s office, stepped outside before Daniels reentered the court room to advise her to “stay focused on the question,” Merchan said.

Prosecutors are resuming their direct questioning of Daniels.

— Lauren Sforza

Trump’s attorneys have moved for a mistrial in his first criminal case, citing Daniels’s salacious testimony Tuesday.

“The guardrails for this witness, answering questions from the government, were just thrown to the side,” Trump attorney Todd Blanche said.

He suggested that Daniels’s story has changed since 2016 from a consensual affair to be more dubious and that some of the details the jury was allowed to hear, including that he didn’t use a condom, were inappropriate.

“How can you just let them ring the bell?” Blanche said.

— Ella Lee

In the latest edition of her Substack newsletter, advice columnist E. Jean Carroll took note of Stormy Daniels’s testimony.

“Admirable and Judicious Reader! Stormy is testifying. How do you think she’s doing?” Carroll began the newsletter, inviting readers to submit a comment.

Carroll has won nearly $100 million from Trump in his two most recent jury trials on sexual battery and defamation claims. Those civil lawsuits came after the advice columnist claimed Trump assaulted her in the 1990s. Trump denies her story and is appealing both verdicts.

— Zach Schonfeld

After the lunch break, Trump strode into the courtroom shortly before 2 p.m.

A courtroom sketch artist’s drawing, an abstract rendering of the day’s proceedings, caught his eye and caused him to smile.

— Ella Lee

The court has adjourned for its lunch break until about 2 p.m.

Daniels will continue testifying this afternoon about the hush money deal at the center of the case.

Daniels connected the timing of her hush money negotiations in October 2016 to that year’s upcoming presidential election, indicating she wanted it settled before the polls closed.

“I was afraid that if it wasn’t done before the nomination I wouldn’t be safe,” Daniels said, before correcting herself that she meant “the election.”

“Or he would never pay and there wouldn’t be a trail to keep me safe,” she added.

To secure a conviction on the felony charges, prosecutors must prove that Trump falsified business records with an intent to commit or conceal some other crime. Prosecutors have cited alleged campaign law violations, portraying the hush money arrangements as an unlawful conspiracy to influence the 2016 election.

Trump’s lawyers have maintained that Daniels’s testimony, while salacious, does not matter because she has no personal knowledge of the business records that correspond to Trump’s charges.

— Zach Schonfeld

After being questioned about how her story surfaced on The Dirty, a gossip site, later in 2011, which Daniels said she had nothing to do with, prosecutor Susan Hoffinger has now moved on to the time window of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

After Trump formally announced his bid, Daniels said her manager reached out, seeking to make money off the story, but was unsuccessful in selling it.

Daniels said that changed after the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape. She then learned that Trump and his then-fixer, Michael Cohen, were interested in buying it, Daniels told jurors.

“They were interested in paying for the story, which was the best thing that could happen, ’cause my husband wouldn’t find out but there would be a documentation,” she said.

— Zach Schonfeld

Telling a story she has recounted for years, Daniels told the jury about how a man threatened her a few weeks after she was interviewed by the magazine.

The encounter happened in a Las Vegas parking lot while she was with her daughter going to a mommy and me workout class, according to Daniels. But she did not go to the police, and there is no documentary evidence or other witnesses who have come forward to corroborate her claims.

“I thought he was the husband or something of one of the other women, and he approached me and threatened me not to continue to tell my story,” Daniels testified.

— Zach Schonfeld

Daniels confirmed that in 2011, she sat for 10-20 minute interview with In Touch Weekly, a celebrity gossip magazine, about her alleged sexual encounter with Trump. Daniels said she participated to control her narrative.

The porn actor said she was supposed to be paid $15,000 but the story never ran. She said “not exactly, no” when asked by prosecutor Susan Hoffinger if she knew why it didn’t publish. It reportedly was killed after Michael Cohen threatened to sue.

Hoffinger also asked Daniels if she told the magazine all the details.

“No. I tried to keep it fairly lighthearted and to the point,” Daniels responded.

— Zach Schonfeld

Daniels said Trump introduced her to ex-Playboy model Karen McDougal during an event promoting his new vodka brand in 2007.

She said she did not know McDougal’s last name at the time and did not know who she was at the time.

McDougal is second woman, aside from Daniels, who prosecutors say was paid hush money to keep an alleged affair with Trump quiet ahead of his 2016 campaign. Trump denies the allegation.

— Lauren Sforza

In a striking moment, cable news channels that had been providing a play-by-play of Trump’s trial coverage cut away to President Biden, who was giving a speech at the Capitol focused on antisemitism just as Stormy Daniels was revealing details of her alleged sexual encounter with Trump.

CNN, MSNBC and Fox News all carried Biden’s speech. No cameras are allowed in Trump’s courtroom in Manhattan, but the cable networks have been providing live coverage from reporters who are in the room.

After the speech ended, Fox quickly switched back to covering the trial, while the other networks continued with a bit of longer analysis of Biden’s remarks.

— Zach Schonfeld

Daniels said she met Trump again while in public at a nightclub at her hotel the day following the alleged sexual encounter.

She said Trump introduced her as his “little friend Stormy,” and described the nightclub as “dark” with “loud music.” She said Trump told her he would figure out how to get her on his reality show “The Apprentice” once he returned home.

She added that Trump would call her once a week, or maybe two to three times a week, after meeting him. She said Trump always called her “honeybunch” and asked when they could get together again.

— Lauren Sforza

Daniels said “yes” when asked if the sexual encounter with Trump was brief. She also testified that Trump did not wear a condom but she did not say anything about it to him.

Afterwards, the porn actor struggled in getting dressed again as she tried to depart as quickly as possible, she testified.

“He said, ‘Oh, it was great, let’s get together again honeybunch,’ and I just wanted to leave,” Daniels said.

Trump looked straight forward as Daniels described the alleged encounter, which he denies, with little visible reaction.

— Zach Schonfeld

Daniels began describing how the alleged sexual encounter with Trump began after she exited the bathroom, where she said she found Trump on the bed wearing boxer shorts and a T-shirt.

She said she thought at one point, “Oh my God. What did I misread to get here?” She said the “intention was pretty clear” when someone is “stripped down to underwear, posing on the bed and waiting for you.”

She said Trump did not approach her in a “threatening manner” and that she did not have any alcohol or drugs that night.

— Lauren Sforza

After a brief morning break, the judge addressed the attorneys before bringing back the jury.

“I think the degree of detail we’ve been going into here is just unnecessary,” Merchan told prosecutors, sympathizing with the concerns expressed by Trump’s team.

The judge then said, “you can move it along more quickly.”

The jury has now returned, and Daniels is resuming her testimony.

— Zach Schonfeld

Daniels is recalling when she spanked Trump with a rolled up magazine before they allegedly had sex at their hotel encounter in 2006.

She testified that Trump would ask her questions only to cut her off and talk more about himself.

“I had had enough of his arrogance and cutting me off and him not giving me dinner,” Daniels said.

Prosecutor Susan Hoffinger later asked, “Where did you swat him?”

“Right on the butt,” Daniels responded.

— Zach Schonfeld

Daniels testified that Trump’s hotel suite was three times the size of her apartment. When she walked into the foyer, she said Trump met her in silk or satin pajamas.

“I told him to go change, so he obliged, very politely,” Daniels said.

The porn actress said she and Trump then sat down at the dining room table in the suite, where Trump asked her various “get to know you” questions. He also asked about how the adult film industry worked, including a query about whether Daniels had been tested for sexually transmitted infections — Daniels responded that she had and was negative.

Daniels has publicly recounted these details multiple times previously. But now, she is under oath, testifying in a historic trial.

— Zach Schonfeld

Daniels is walking the jurors through her story of how she ended up in Trump’s hotel room, where she claims they had sex, after meeting him at a golf tournament.

The porn actress says she ultimately agreed to have dinner with Trump, but despite “really nice restaurants” in the hotel, Trump’s bodyguard sent instructions to take a specific elevator up to the penthouse floor. That ultimately led her to Trump’s hotel room, she testified.

“That was my only expectation, that we’d have dinner,” Daniels said.

— Zach Schonfeld

Daniels recounted her first experience meeting Trump during a celebrity golf tournament in 2006 near Lake Tahoe.

She said their first interaction, when she was introduced to him, was “very brief.” She said Trump told her she must be “smart” after he learned she also directed films.

She said his security detail asked if she would like to have dinner with Trump at the time, to which she said no.

— Lauren Sforza