- Stormy Daniels took the stand at Trump’s hush-money trial Tuesday.
- The adult-film actress stood 20 feet from Trump in court and swore to tell the truth.
- Trump allegedly falsified records to hide an election-influencing, $130,000 hush-money payment to Daniels.
The world is used to Stormy Daniels presenting herself confidently — proudly sharing in a book, on podcasts, and in a documentary the nitty-gritty details of the sexual encounter she said she had with Donald Trump in 2006.
On Tuesday, the jury in the former president’s hush-money trial saw a different side of her.
On the stand, Daniels described feeling scared and ashamed after her night with Trump.
On Tuesday, these two arch-enemies — with a potential felony conviction at stake — faced each other for the first time in a decade at former President Donald Trump’s criminal hush-money trial.
“My name is Stormy Daniels,” the porn star at the center of the historic trial said as she swore to tell the truth while at the witness stand of a Manhattan courtroom, just 20 feet from Trump.
Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, wore black-rimmed glasses and an all-black, loose-fitting shirt and sweater as she took the witness stand. Trump sat at the defense table, his posture slightly slumped. He looked down at the defense table, not at Daniels, as she began her testimony.
As he passed by pews of journalists in the courtroom, leaving and entering during breaks, Trump wore a furious scowl on his face.
Under questioning from Susan Hoffinger, a prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office, Daniels’ testimony quickly moved to July 2006, when she met Trump at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe and, later that night, wound up in the then-“Apprentice” star’s penthouse hotel suite after accepting a dinner invitation.
It was in that hotel suite where Daniels testified that she and Trump had sex — an allegation Trump vehemently denies.
Speaking at a rapid clip, Daniels told the jury Trump greeted her at the door wearing “satin or silk” pajamas and that she immediately cracked a Hugh Hefner joke and asked him to change.
While chatting in his hotel room, Trump expressed interest in how Daniels “segued from being a porn star to writing and directing.”
At one point, Trump raised the idea of Daniels appearing on Trump’s hit reality TV show, “The Apprentice,” testified Daniels, who said she told Trump that there was no way NBC would let her on TV.
“You remind me of my daughter. You’re blonde and beautiful and people love seeing them on TV as well,” Daniels recalled Trump telling her.
Trump told Daniels he could help rig the show in her favor “to make sure that you would make a good showing,” Daniels said.
Daniels also told the jury that, at one point, Trump’s wife and former first lady, Melania Trump, came up during their conversation.
“He said, ‘Oh, don’t worry about that. We don’t even sleep in the same room,'” Daniels testified.
After a trip to the bathroom — where Daniels said she observed Trump’s “gold tweezers” — she saw Trump sitting on the bed wearing only his boxer shorts and a T-shirt.
“I felt the blood basically leave my hands and my feet,” Daniels told the jury. “I just thought, ‘Oh my god,’ what did I misread to get there.’ The intention was pretty clear.”
“The next thing I know I was on the bed,” Daniels said. “I had my clothes and my shoes off.”
When Daniels uttered the words “missionary position,” Trump’s attorneys objected, and the judge sustained the objection.
Daniels testified that Trump did not wear a condom during the encounter and that it concerned her, but she “didn’t say anything at all.”
She recalled getting dressed again with some difficulty.
It was completely dark, and she had trouble putting her strappy shoes back on, she said.
“It was hard to get my shoes on because my hands were shaking so hard,” she said.
Afterward, Trump told her they’d have to get together again soon, brought up “The Apprentice,” and kissed her goodbye, she testified.
“I just wanted to leave,” she said.
Daniels told “scores” of people about having dinner with Trump in his hotel suite afterwards, she said. But she said she kept the details about the sex to a smaller circle of close friends.
“I told very few people that we had sex because I felt very ashamed that I didn’t stop it and I didn’t say no,” she testified Tuesday.
‘He threatened me to continue to not to tell my story’
Trump and Daniels kept in touch after their evening in Tahoe, she testified. Trump called her about once a week, giving updates — or lack thereof — of getting her as a guest on “The Apprentice.”
He often called while she was on set directing adult movies, and she put him on speaker for everyone to hear, Daniels testified.
They met in person again several times. At one event, in Los Angeles, Trump greeted Daniels with a kiss and introduced her to his “friend” named Karen, she testified.
Daniels said she later learned it was Karen McDougal, the former Playboy bunny who has also said she had an affair with Trump.
In some of their meetings, Trump indicated she wanted to have sex with her again, Daniels said. She made excuses, she said.
“I told him I was on my period,” she said about one meeting in Los Angeles, where she said Trump was watching a documentary about sharks.
In January of 2008, Trump called and told Daniels he couldn’t persuade the higher-ups at NBC to get her on “The Apprentice,” Daniels testified. She said she believed Trump would think Daniels was upset because Jenna Jameson, another adult film actress, had made an appearance on the show.
“He thought I was going to be mad,” Daniels said. “I didn’t care.”
From that point, Daniels put Trump out of her mind, she said. Life was “pretty awesome,” she testified. She got a raise, directed more adult movies, snagged a few parts in “mainstream” films, had a daughter, and “became a nationally ranked equestrian with my horses,” she said.
Things took a turn in 2011, when her agent Gina Rodriguez contacted her and said the gossip publication InTouch would publish a story about the affair with Trump, Daniels testified.
Rodriguez encouraged Daniels to do an interview with the publication and “control the narrative” — as well as get $15,000 from InTouch for it, Daniels said.
“I tried to keep it very lighthearted and quick and to the point,” she said.
The story was never published. Daniels said she didn’t know why, at the time.
Soon afterward, in Las Vegas, Daniels was headed to a “mommy-and-me workout” with her daughter, she said.
She was approached by a man in the parking lot who warned her about discussing her “encounter with Mr. Trump,” Daniels said.
“He threatened me to continue to not to tell my story,” she testified, of the man.
Daniels harbored that fear for years. In 2015, when Trump ran for president — and after the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape — Rodriguez told her that she could sell the rights to her story to Michael Cohen and Trump for $130,000.
Daniels didn’t even try to negotiate the money, she said.
“Didn’t care. Didn’t care about money. Just wanted to get it done.”
Trump fumed when he heard Stormy would testify
Daniels — and the $130,000 hush money payment that purchased her silence just 11 days before the 2016 election — is the reason Trump has been on trial in Manhattan since mid-April.
Prosecutors for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg say that Trump falsified 34 Trump Organization business documents throughout 2017, his first week in office, when he reimbursed then-attorney and fixer Michael Cohen for paying Daniels the hush money.
The business records — shown to jurors for the first time on Monday — disguised Cohen’s reimbursement checks as “legal fees,” hiding what was actually an illegal conspiracy to influence the 2016 election, prosecutors say.
Daniels is an adult entertainment entrepreneur who has capitalized on her connection to Trump, writing a book, participating in a controversial documentary, and embarking on a “Make America Horny Again” tour of strip clubs.
She told the court Tuesday that she moved out of her family home in high school because she had trouble living with her mother and started stripping for money.
Daniels told the jury she directed her first adult film at age 23.
“I was one of the youngest, if not the youngest, adult feature directors,” she said.
When she first met Trump at the Lake Tahoe celebrity golf tournament, she told the jury he quickly complimented her.
“Oh, you actually direct, too? You must be very smart,” Daniels recalled Trump telling her.
In a now-deleted early Tuesday morning post on Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social, the former president fumed after he apparently found out Daniels would take the witness stand on Tuesday.
“I have just recently been told who the witness is today. This is unprecedented, no time for lawyers to prepare,” Trump’s 7:30 a.m. post read, adding, “No judge has ever run a trial in such a biased and partisan way.”
Before the jury was called in Tuesday, attorneys for Trump objected to Daniels “testifying about any sexual act.”
“We’re informed the witness today, the second witness, will be Stormy Daniels,” Trump defense attorney Susan Necheles told New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, adding that testimony about any sexual act would be “unduly prejudicial.”
Prosecutor Susan Hoffinger explained that there would be details in Daniels’ testimony about how the porn star “ended up having a sexual encounter” with Trump.
“In terms of the sexual act, it’s going to be very basic,” she added. “It’s not going to be descriptions of genitalia or anything of that nature.”
Still, Necheles said, “There’s just no need for any of those details here.”
“There’s real questions about the credibility of this woman,” Necheles said of Daniels. “This is a case about books and records.”
Merchan said Daniels has “credibility issues,” but that he was “satisfied with the representations that Ms. Hoffinger has made.”
Before Daniels returned to the witness stand Tuesday afternoon, however, Trump’s legal team asked for a mistrial based on what they saw as “extraordinarily prejudicial” testimony about her perceived safety concerns that morning.
Merchan declined, saying they could take up the issues on cross-examination.
This is a breaking story; please check back for developments.
