“Even though you had agreed that you would not discuss this supposed story and you had received a lot of money for that agreement, you then decided that you wanted to publicly say that you had sex with Donald Trump,” defense attorney Susan Necheles said as she questioned Daniels in court.
Daniels shot back: “Nobody would ever want to publicly say that.”
Daniels’ dig at Trump from the witness stand came on her combative second day of cross-examination in the criminal hush money trial in Manhattan Supreme Court.
Necheles continued her efforts to undermine Daniels’ credibility and raise doubts about her account of having sex with Trump in 2006. The alleged one-night stand is a key component of the case, which centers on a $130,000 hush money payment to Daniels from Trump’s then -personal lawyer Michael Cohen shortly before the 2016 presidential election.
At one point, Necheles told Daniels, “You have a lot of experience making phony stories about sex.”
Daniels replied, “Wow. That’s not how I would put it. The sex in the films is very much real, just like what happened to me in that room.”
She added that if her claim of sleeping with Trump was untrue, “I would’ve written it to be a lot better.”
Before the jury came in, Judge Juan Merchan told Necheles that she cannot bring up Daniels’ record of being arrested in 2009 after her then-husband accused her of assault. The charge was reportedly dismissed without a conviction or plea.
While the trial was underway, Sen. Rick Scott appeared outside the courthouse to slam the judge’s daughter and the wife of Trump’s prosecutor, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
“Let’s look at who’s involved in doing this,” said the Florida Republican, who had entered the courtroom alongside Trump on Thursday morning.
“The lead prosecutor was a No. 3 person that Biden — the Biden Justice Department. The judge’s daughter is a political operative and raises money for Democrats. You’ve got the lead prosecutor’s wife is a significant donor to Democrats and I think to Biden,” he said.
Trump is barred by a gag order from speaking about all three of those people, in addition to witnesses and jurors, court staff members and their families. The gag order also prohibits Trump from “directing others to make public statements” about those parties.
“So this is just a bunch of Democrats saying, ‘We want to make sure that Donald Trump can’t talk,'” Scott said.
Asked if Scott was appearing at the trial because of Trump’s gag order, the senator said, “No, I’m fed up.”
Merchan has held Trump in contempt of court for violating his gag order 10 times. On Monday, the judge warned Trump that he will be put in jail if he continues to violate court orders.
Daniels’ first day of testimony drew an angry reaction from the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.
On Tuesday, Merchan warned Trump’s attorneys that the former president had to stop cursing and shaking his head during Daniels’ testimony, because he might intimidate her or influence the jury.
Stormy Daniels arrives at Manhattan Criminal Court on May 09, 2024 in New York City.
Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images
“I understand that your client is upset at this point, but he is cursing audibly, and he is shaking his head visually and that’s contemptuous,” Merchan said during a break in Daniels’ testimony.
“It has the potential to intimidate the witness and the jury can see that,” Merchan said, according to a court transcript shared Tuesday evening. “You need to speak to him. I won’t tolerate that.”
The judge delivered that warning at the bench, out of earshot from reporters in the courtroom, because he said he did not “want to embarrass” Trump.
The former president’s flashes of anger came as Daniels testified — in vivid detail — about her alleged sexual encounter with Trump in 2006 shortly after meeting him at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe.
Trump is charged with falsifying business records related to a $130,000 hush-money payment made to Daniels. Prosecutors say the money was part of an illegal scheme to benefit Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Cohen paid Daniels for her silence about the alleged sex less than two weeks before that election. Trump reimbursed Cohen after becoming president.
The hush money case, while often considered the least serious of the four criminal indictments Trump faces, is increasingly likely to be the only one to make it to trial before the Nov. 5 presidential election.
On Wednesday, a Georgia court appeals potentially delayed a state-level election interference case against Trump by agreeing to take up his request to disqualify his prosecutor, District Attorney Fani Willis.
On Tuesday evening, federal Judge Aileen Cannon indefinitely postponed Trump’s trial on charges that he illegally took classified documents and then tried to conceal them from authorities.
A federal election interference case against Trump in Washington, DC, meanwhile, is on hold while the Supreme Court considers whether Trump is immune from the charges because they he was president at the time the alleged crimes occurred.
