During tense exchanges, former pornographic actress Stormy Daniels demonstrated great responsiveness and tenacity, while knowing how to be vulnerable, while the defense mocked her career and attacked her credibility.
In this courtroom with white neon chandeliers, Stormy Daniels responded to the attacks, for hours, during the most intense sequence since the opening of Donald Trump’s criminal trial, the first for a former president of the United States .
The 45-year-old actress and director, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, received $130,000 at the end of the 2016 presidential campaign to keep quiet about a sexual relationship she claimed to have had with Donald Trump in 2006, a payment hidden in the center of the case.
The billionaire denies any relationship. On Thursday, her lawyer Susan Necheles repeatedly accused the actress of having fabricated this sexual relationship, even going so far as to ask her: “You made it all up, didn’t you?”
“No”, Stormy Daniels retorted categorically. In turn, she accused the lawyer of manipulating her comments: “You’re trying to make me say it’s changed, but it hasn’t changed”she said about her version of the facts.
Tarot cards
During this cross-examination, Mr. Trump’s counsel tried to portray the actress as greedy, sleazy and deceitful.
The lawyer questioned Stormy Daniels about her decision to write a book recounting this relationship and to promote commercial products. “As if Mr. Trump were doing the opposite”quipped Stormy Daniels.
Susan Necheles even went so far as to mention the actress’ interest in tarot cards and the paranormal, a way of making her seem like an unbalanced person.
She then presented her as a person of fiction, mocking her work as a screenwriter and director of pornographic films by claiming that it made her good at distorting the truth.
“So you have a lot of experience making fake sex real.”she provoked.
“Wow, I don’t see it like that,” replied Stormy Daniels, adding that “the sex is real. The names of the characters may be different. But the sex is real. That’s why it’s pornography.”
A muscular cross-examination
If the story with Mr. Trump was false, “I would have written it so that it was much better”she tackled.
At the end of this cross-examination, the defense ended up asking the actress if she had information on the accounting of Mr. Trump’s group of companies, which constitutes the heart of the case, to which she answered in the negative.
During a hearing held after the jurors had been dismissed, the judge did not hide his irritation with the conduct of the cross-examination.
Ms. Necheles spent a lot of time on details mentioned by Stormy Daniels during her testimony, repeating them “again and again in the ears of the jurors”he pointed.
And this even though Mr. Trump’s defense – which requested in vain on Thursday, for the second time, the cancellation of the proceedings – had opposed the presentation of this story. “I don’t understand”he confided.
