Porn star Stormy Daniels, at the center of Donald Trump’s historic trial, returns to testify in court in New York on Thursday, the continuation of a tense face-to-face with the former President of the United States and his lawyers, who will seek to discredit her in front of the jury.
The actress and director was already heard for five hours on Tuesday, delivering unfiltered testimony about her meeting and the sexual relationship she claims to have had in 2006 with the current Republican presidential candidate, on the sidelines of a celebrity golf tournament.
Donald Trump, already married at the time to his wife Melania, denies any sexual relationship.
The first former president of the United States to appear in criminal proceedings, he is being prosecuted for the concealment of a payment of 130,000 dollars to the actress to buy her silence on this episode at the very end of the 2016 presidential campaign.
Since April 15, the Republican candidate has had to sit almost every day in the Manhattan courtroom and listen silently to the proceedings, an obligation that prevents him from campaigning as he pleases.
“Extremely damaging”
Responding, nervous but voluble, to the prosecutor’s questions, Stormy Daniels, 27 years old at the time, hid nothing on Tuesday about her meeting in 2006 with the mogul: the “silk or satin pajamas” that he wore in his hotel suite, to the confidences about his wife — “we don’t sleep in the same room” — to the fact that he did not use a condom.
Stormy Daniels described her reaction when she came out of the bathroom to find the 60-year-old billionaire waiting for her undressed on his bed. “I felt the blood leave my hands,” she said. If she did not feel threatened, she assures that the businessman’s intention “was quite clear” and that the “balance of power was unbalanced”.
This unique moment of the trial was necessary in the eyes of the prosecution, because it was to keep quiet ten years later that the actress received $130,000 from Donald Trump’s ex-lawyer, Michael Cohen.
And it is because of the concealment of the reimbursement to the lawyer in the accounts of his holding company, the Trump Organization, that Donald Trump is being tried today for 34 crimes of accounting falsification, which could earn him a conviction and in theory up to a prison sentence.
Cross-examination
But the defense denounced an unworthy and “extremely damaging” outburst for the Republican candidate, six months before his new duel against Joe Biden, on November 5.
Judge Juan Merchan agreed that certain passages of the testimony could have “remained silent.”
A sign of the tension that reigned, he also asked Donald Trump’s lawyers to keep their client, who was “swearing audibly” during Stormy Daniels’ story, from reactions likely to “intimidate the witness.”
The actress’ story continues Thursday with the defense’s cross-examination.
One of Donald Trump’s lawyers, Susan Necheles, began the exercise on Tuesday by seeking to push her to her limits, portraying Stormy Daniels as a corrupt woman, who would have every interest in seeing a conviction of the ex-president, to whom she owes approximately $600,000 in legal fees after a lost defamation trial against him.
If the consequences for his campaign of a possible conviction are difficult to predict, an acquittal of Donald Trump would represent a victory for him.
Especially since the trial in New York risks being the only one to be judged before the November 5 election, among the four criminal cases in which he is charged.
