Prosecutors dove straight into the seamy details of the hush-money case against former President Donald Trump on Tuesday, getting adult film actress Stormy Daniels to testify about an alleged sexual encounter in a Lake Tahoe suite in 2006 and efforts to sell her story before the presidential election a decade later.
Mr. Trump tapped his lawyers’ arms, shook his head or stared straight ahead as Ms. Daniels testified about Mr. Trump’s satin pajamas and bed maneuvers.
“I had my clothes and my shoes off. I removed my bra. We were in missionary position,” Ms. Daniels said, adding she left as fast as she could.
The former president denies the encounter and repeatedly urged his lawyers to object during testimony. Later, he told reporters that the trial had veered off track.
“This is just a disaster for the DA, the Soros-backed DA. This whole case is just a disaster,” Mr. Trump said.
Suggesting the case was a political stunt to hurt his White House run against President Biden, he said the time in court diverted him from the campaign trail.
SEE ALSO: Trump says Stormy Daniels’ testimony backfired: ‘This whole case is just a disaster’
“I should be out campaigning right now. I’m leading in all the polls. I’d like to be campaigning. We’ll be leading by a lot more,” he said.
Defense lawyers moved for a mistrial, saying Ms. Daniels’ testimony slipped far beyond guardrails set by the court.
State Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan said some of Ms. Daniels’ comments went overboard. But he rejected the motion for a mistrial, saying he would instead give a limiting instruction to the jury about aspects of her testimony.
Still, the sordid details in Ms. Daniels’ testimony could form the basis of an appeal if Mr. Trump is convicted.
Ms. Daniels is a central figure in the case because, once Mr. Trump started campaigning in 2015, she worked with an agent to sell the story about the alleged encounter.
Ms. Daniels said they didn’t get much interest from news outlets. But the October 2016 leak of the “Access Hollywood” tape, in which Mr. Trump spoke crudely about women, prompted Mr. Trump and his attorney Michael Cohen to offer $130,000 so that Ms. Daniels wouldn’t disclose the story.
SEE ALSO: Defense gets crack at Stormy Daniels, highlights her hatred for Trump
“They were interested in paying for the story, which was the best thing that could happen because then my husband wouldn’t find out but there would still be documentation,” Ms. Daniels said. “I didn’t care about the amount. I just wanted to get it done.”
The deal almost died after a deadline for payment, though it was revived and Ms. Daniels received $96,000 after her agent and lawyer got their cuts. Ms. Daniels sued to get out of the disclosure agreement in 2018 and wrote a book, “Full Disclosure,” about her life and interactions with Mr. Trump.
Prosecutors argue that Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen criminally concealed the payment to Ms. Daniels through checks and business entries that show intent to commit election and tax offenses. Mr. Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records.
Even if convicted, Mr. Trump is unlikely to face serious prison time under the records charges, and the facts in the case have been litigated in public for nearly eight years.
Still, the scene was a remarkable one: A person who has sex on camera for a living was testifying against a former president who is the presumptive Republican nominee in the November presidential election.
The day’s testimony had a central irony: Allegations suppressed in 2016 were now being told, in excruciating detail, in open court six months before the 2024 contest.
Judge Merchan allowed prosecutors to elicit the eyebrow-raising testimony to establish Ms. Daniels’ credibility but drew the line at descriptions of genitalia or other sordid details. At times, the judge scolded the prosecution over the “unnecessary” level of detail.
Mr. Trump’s son, Eric, sat in the courtroom’s front row during the salacious testimony.
Once Mr. Trump’s attorneys got a crack at Ms. Daniels, they started their cross-examination by confirming that Ms. Daniels hates Mr. Trump.
“You want him to go to jail?” Trump attorney Susan Necheles asked.
“If he’s convicted,” Ms. Daniels said.
The defense also established that Ms. Daniels is reluctant to pay Mr. Trump the $560,000 in legal fees she owes after losing a defamation suit to him.
“You despise him, and you call him names,” Ms. Necheles said.
Ms. Daniels said that was because Mr. Trump had called her names in his social media posts.
Through questioning, the defense argued Ms. Daniels sought to profit off her claims about Mr. Trump and exaggerated her story accordingly.
“You’re making this up as you sit there, right?” Ms. Necheles said, referring to Ms. Daniels’ testimony, which the witness denied.
During a break in the cross-examination, Mr. Trump said he thought it was going “very well.”
Earlier, Ms. Daniels testified she was 27 years old when she declined a dinner invitation that Mr. Trump delivered through his bodyguard in Lake Tahoe. She reconsidered, however, leading to the hotel suite encounter.
Alone in the hotel suite, Ms. Daniels said she talked to Mr. Trump for about two hours about her family and how the pornographic industry worked, including testing for sexually transmitted diseases.
Ms. Daniels testified Mr. Trump stripped down while she was in the bathroom and they had sex.
She saw Mr. Trump in public the next day, and then-Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger was with them, according to testimony.
Ms. Daniels said she told people she met Mr. Trump in his room but told only a few close friends about the alleged sexual encounter. Mr. Trump called her frequently in the months afterward with updates about a possible appearance on his television show, “The Apprentice,” she testified.
“He always talked,” she said, “about when we could get together again, did I miss him, and he always called me ‘honeybunch.’”
• This article is based in part on wire service reports.
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.