A quality silence, that of big court days, greeted Stormy Daniels on Tuesday May 7. Only her high heels clicked on the ground as she walked behind a police officer. It was 10:30 a.m. when the former porn actress went behind the back of the defendant Donald Trump and took his place in the witness seat. To his right, twelve jurors. To his left, Judge Juan Merchan. Stormy Daniels is dressed all in black. It wants to be sober: a major challenge. A tattoo is visible on his right arm. Sitting down, she puts on her glasses. The former president looks elsewhere.
She asks to be called Stormy Daniels, a stage name having consumed her original identity, Stéphanie Clifford, this young girl born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who became a porn star. Her one-night sexual relationship with Donald Trump in 2006 is an essential, but not central, piece of the facts alleged against the former president. Facts of falsification of accounting documents, to hide a payment of 130,000 dollars to Stormy Daniels, in exchange for her silence, on the eve of the 2016 presidential election.
For two hours, the witness recounted her difficult childhood, then her journey. Parents divorced when she was 4, “very low income family”. She lives with her mother “very careless”Who “sometimes disappeared for several days”. In high school, she worked in the school newspaper and wanted to become a veterinarian. She does ballet, especially horse riding, her great passion. But at the end of high school, another life is taking shape. Through a friend, she discovered the “exotic dance”suggestive, which allows him to earn more in two evenings than in “stirring the manure eight hours a day”, at the equestrian club. Stormy Daniels poses nude at 21. She agreed to appear in a pornographic film two years later. Her career is traced, she lists the stages. Success. Recognition, without qualms. At this moment in the story, the witness is rather relaxed, already accustomed to this self-portraiture exercise, after so many interviews and the publication of her book.
“What could go wrong?” »
Then came the year 2006 and the famous golf tournament at Lake Tahoe. Stormy Daniels is one of the hostesses. She is under contract with Wicked Pictures productions. “Wicked sponsored one of the holes on the golf course. It was funny, an adult film company, sponsoring one of the holes. » No one smiled among the jurors. It was there, on the course, that she met Donald Trump, then an entrepreneur and television star, presenter of the reality TV show The Apprentice. “He was as old or older than my father”, or 60 years, notes Stormy Daniels. She is 27 years old.
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