Lawyers for Donald Trump on Thursday sought to discredit and undermine testimony from Stormy Daniels, who gave combative testimony about her alleged sexual encounter with the former president and the $130,000 hush-money payment at the heart of the criminal case.
Prosecutors also started laying the groundwork for their move to tie Trump to former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen – who wired the hush money and was reimbursed – by calling former White House aide Madeleine Westerhout to the stand.
Here are the key takeaways from day 14 of Trump’s criminal trial:
Daniels’s story remains mostly consistent and intact
Trump’s lawyer Susan Necheles suggested through her cross-examination of Stormy Daniels that her story about her alleged sexual encounter with Trump had changed every time she told it publicly, attempting to cast doubt on the account she provided in her testimony on Tuesday.
The inconsistencies that Necheles pulled Daniels up on, however, came across as inconsequential.
For instance, Daniels had told CNN’s Anderson Cooper in a 2018 interview that she had dinner with Trump at the encounter. But Necheles noted that when she retold the story on the witness stand, she confirmed she never had dinner and was now suggesting she had “dinner time”.
And when Daniels told the story to InTouch magazine in a 2011 interview, she recalled that Trump was lying on the bed when she came out of the bathroom, she thought to herself, “Oh, here we go”, they kissed and then had sex. But she claimed at trial that she blacked out and found herself having sex.
The retelling of the alleged sexual encounter was different in tone and substance, but there was one major detail that prosecutors, on redirect examination, confirmed was consistent: she recalled having sex with Trump in 2011 and at trial.
Daniels, who spoke quickly and appeared unfazed by Necheles’s questions, refused to concede any inconsistencies. “You’re trying to make it say that it changed, but it hasn’t changed,” she said.
Westerhout confirms Trump scrutinized finances
The former Trump White House director of Oval Office operations, Madeleine Westerhout, confirmed – eventually through tears – that Trump closely scrutinized checks he signed while he was president, and that he would call Trump Organization employees if he had questions about the checks.
The testimony could be damaging for Trump insofar as it undercut the defense argument that Trump was detached from the scheme to reimburse Michael Cohen for the hush money, and was not directly aware what the checks to Cohen were for.
Westerhout also described Trump’s day-to-day frugality and how Rhona Graff, his assistant at the Trump Organization, once asked if he wanted to approve a roughly $6,500 annual dues payment to a golf club. Trump’s handwritten note saying “Pay – ASAP, D” showed he paid attention to the minutiae.
Prosecutors effectively suggested to the jury it was implausible that Trump did not closely follow what 12 $35,000 checks, issued to Cohen, were for.
Judge again denies Trump mistrial motion
The presiding judge, Juan Merchan, declined for a second time to declare a mistrial after Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanche complained that Daniels’s testimony about spanking Trump and how she came to have sex with Trump was irrelevant to alleged falsification of business records and prejudicial.
In explaining his decision, Merchan laid some of the blame at Trump’s own team, saying Blanche’s opening statement denying a sexual liaison opened the door for her to testify about it. He also said they could have made more objections – including against some of the most salacious details in Daniels’s testimony.
Chief among them was Daniels’s comment that Trump was not wearing a condom, after previously testifying that the only reason she went to work for a certain adult entertainment company was because they mandated condom use.
“I agree [that] that shouldn’t have come out. But for the life of me, I don’t know why Ms Necheles didn’t object. Why on earth she wouldn’t object to a mention of a condom I don’t understand,” Merchan said.
The judge also denied a motion by Trump’s legal team to modify the gag order, prohibiting him from attacking trial participants, to allow him to respond to inflammatory comments by Stormy Daniels about her sexual encounter, now that she had finished testifying and could not be chilled from appearing.
Merchan told Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanche that he remained concerned that Trump would aggressively attack Daniels and her testimony, which could chill witnesses who have not yet testified.
“My concern is not just protecting Ms Daniels or a witness who has already testified, my concern is protecting integrity of process as a whole,” Merchan said. “Other witnesses will see your client doing whatever it is he intends to do … the reason why the gag order is in place to begin with is precisely because of the nature of these attacks.”
