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Post by Admin on May 7, 2024 19:11:57 GMT
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Post by Admin on May 8, 2024 3:02:42 GMT
NEW YORK (AP) — With Donald Trump sitting just feet away, Stormy Daniels testified Tuesday at the former president’s hush money trial about a sexual encounter the porn actor says they had in 2006 that resulted in her being paid to keep silent during the presidential race 10 years later.
Jurors appeared riveted as Daniels offered a detailed and at times graphic account of the encounter Trump has denied. Trump stared straight ahead when Daniels entered the courtroom, later whispering to his lawyers and shaking his head as she testified.
What to know about Trump’s hush money trial:
Trump faces jail threat over gag order. Follow today’s live updates. A guide to terms used in the Trump trial. Trump is the first ex-president on criminal trial. Here’s what to know about the hush money case. Trump is facing four criminal indictments, and a civil lawsuit. You can track all of the cases here.
The testimony was by far the most-awaited spectacle in a trial that has toggled between tabloidesque elements and dry record-keeping details. A courtroom appearance by a porn actor who says she had an intimate encounter with a former American president added to the long list of historic firsts in a landmark case laden with claims of sex, payoffs and cover-ups and unfolding as the presumptive Republican nominee makes another bid for the White House.
Daniels veered into salacious details despite the repeated objections of defense lawyers, who demanded a mistrial over what they said were prejudicial and irrelevant comments.
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Post by Admin on May 8, 2024 3:04:19 GMT
Led by a prosecutor’s questioning, Daniels described how an initial meeting at a golf tournament, where they discussed the adult film industry, progressed to a “brief” sexual encounter that she said Trump initiated after inviting her to dinner and back to his hotel suite.
She said she didn’t feel physically or verbally threatened, though she knew his bodyguard was outside the suite. There was also what she perceived as an imbalance of power: Trump “was bigger and blocking the way,” she said.
At the time, Trump was married to his wife, Melania, who has not been in court for the trial. Daniels said Trump told her they did not sleep in the same room, prompting him to shake his head at the defense table.
After it ended, Daniels said, “It was really hard to get my shoes because my hands were shaking so hard.”
“He said: ‘Oh, it was great. Let’s get together again, honey bunch,’” Daniels said. “I just wanted to leave.”
Trump’s reaction to her testimony at the defense table prompted Judge Juan Merchan to summon his lawyers to a quiet discussion at the bench.
“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. It has the potential to intimidate the witness and the jury can see that,” Merchan said, adding, “I am speaking to you here at the bench because I don’t want to embarrass him.”
“I will talk to him,” Blanche replied.
In the years since the encounter was disclosed, Daniels has emerged as a vocal Trump antagonist, sharing her story innumerable times and criticizing the former president with mocking and pejorative jabs. But there was no precedent for Tuesday’s testimony, when she came face-to-face with Trump and was asked under oath in an austere courtroom to describe her experiences to a jury weighing whether to convict a former American president of felony crimes for the first time in history.
She told jurors how she met Trump because the adult film studio she worked for at the time sponsored one of the holes on the golf course. She said they had a brief conversation when Trump’s group passed through, chatting about the adult film industry and her directing abilities. The celebrity real estate developer remarked that she must be “the smart one” if she was making films, Daniels recalled.
Later, in an area known as the “gift room,” where celebrity golfers collected gift bags and swag, Trump remembered her as “the smart one” and asked her to dinner, Daniels said.
She said her then-publicist suggested in a phone call that Trump’s invitation was a good excuse to skip a work dinner and would “make a great story” and perhaps help her career.
“What could possibly go wrong?” she recalled the publicist saying.
The two saw each other periodically in the ensuing years, when she said she spurned Trump’s advances.
In 2011, several years after she and Trump were last in touch, she said she learned from her agent that the story of her encounter with Trump had made its way to a magazine.
She said she agreed to an interview for $15,000 because “I’d rather make the money than somebody make money off of me, and at least I could control the narrative.” The story never ran, but later that year, she was alarmed when an item turned up on a website.
Perhaps seeking to preempt defense claims that she was in urgent need of a massive payout, Daniels testified that she was in the best financial shape of her life when she authorized her manager to shop her story during the 2016 presidential campaign.
She said she had no intent of approaching Cohen or Trump to have them pay her.
“My motivation wasn’t money,” she said. “It was to get the story out,” she testified.
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Post by Admin on May 9, 2024 15:26:51 GMT
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Post by Admin on May 10, 2024 17:08:30 GMT
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