Satin pajamas and mistrial denied: Trump trial
key takeaways, day 13
Stormy Daniels undercuts some of Trump’s defenses as
his lawyer suggests Daniels has a propensity to embellish
Hugo Lowell
in New York
Tue 7 May
2024 22.11 BST
Stormy
Daniels, whose alleged sexual affair with Donald Trump prompted a hush-money
scheme at the heart of the criminal case brought by the Manhattan district
attorney, described in excruciating detail on Tuesday her encounters with the
former US president.
The
testimony from Daniels appeared to be embarrassing for Trump, who shook his
head at times, and was notably freewheeling – to the extent that the presiding
judge sustained multiple objections, even as he denied a mistrial motion on the
basis that key parts of her account were prejudicial.
Daniels was
wired $130,000 by ex-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen just before the 2016 election
to bury her account of the affair. Prosecutors allege Trump later reimbursed
Cohen the money but covered up its nature by falsifying business records and in
doing so, violated state election laws.
Here are
the key takeaways from day 13 of Trump’s criminal trial:
1. Daniels
undercut some Trump defenses
On direct
examination, prosecutors used Daniels to undercut some of the Trump defense
team’s attempts to distance himself from the hush-money scheme and offer
alternative explanations to the jury as to why he pushed for the account of the
affair to be buried before the 2016 election.
Trump’s
team has suggested, for instance, that the hush-money scheme was to ensure his
wife Melania would not be embarrassed.
But
prosecutors suggested that could not be entirely true because Daniels recalled
that when she met with Trump in his Lake Tahoe hotel room in 2006 and she said
Melania was beautiful, Trump allegedly told her not to worry because “we don’t
even sleep in the same room.”
Trump’s
team has also suggested that Trump might be considered the victim of extortion
by Daniels because she was hanging the affair story over his head in the weeks
before the 2016 election.
But
prosecutors suggested that was not true, by having Daniels testify that she
didn’t negotiate for more than the $130,000 in the catch-and-kill because she
“didn’t care” about the money – she just wanted it to be over and for her
partner to not find out about her alleged affair with Trump.
Daniels
also seemed to cast Trump as inherently immoral by testifying that he compared
her to his daughter Ivanka – shortly before they allegedly had sex – when he
tried to persuade her to appear on The Apprentice. “You remind me of my
daughter, she’s blonde and smart and beautiful and people underestimate her as
well,” she recalled him saying.
2. Trump
picked at Daniels’ credibility
Daniels
appeared to have extraordinary recall about the first time she met Trump in
July 2006 and then again in 2007, describing in close detail on direct
examination the layout of Trump’s hotel suite – down to the ornate
black-and-white floor tiles and how Trump greeted her in silk-satin pajamas.
But under
cross-examination by Trump’s lawyer Susan Necheles, Daniels acknowledged that
she had a clear hatred for Trump and suggested she was hoping to get out of
having to pay Trump a roughly $250,000 judgement entered against her in federal
district court in California.
Necheles
also suggested Daniels increasingly included details of the sex with Trump in
order to sell her story after first telling it in 2011, and then vacillated
between denying and confirming having sex with Trump. The point of the
questioning was to undercut her credibility, and suggest she had a propensity
to embellish.
3. Trump
motion for mistrial denied
The
presiding judge Juan Merchan denied Trump’s motion for a mistrial even as he
acknowledged that Daniels was a difficult witness to control and gave
freewheeling testimony that included things that would have been better left
unsaid.
Trump’s
lawyers moved for a mistrial after arguing that Daniels gave testimony that was
irrelevant to the falsification of business records charges, such as a power
imbalance when they allegedly had sex, and that Trump allegedly did not use a
condom.
But the
judge ultimately ruled he did not think it warranted a mistrial, for now, and
added he was surprised that Trump’s lawyers did not make objections more often,
adding that at one point, he had to step in to limit her testimony of his own
accord because they had not.
Merchan
separately warned Daniels to stay on topic after sustaining a series of
objections. “Just listen to the question, and answer the question,” he told
her.
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