On the docket: a category-5 Stormy
Adult film star Stormy Daniels took the stand on Tuesday and offered the most lurid, explosive testimony so far in the trial against Donald Trump. It was so lurid, in fact, that the former president’s attorneys unsuccessfully moved for a mistrial.
Judge Juan Merchan had allowed Daniels to testify with the caveat that prosecutors should avoid the specific sexual details of her alleged 2006 affair with Trump. But Daniels repeatedly – and at times unprompted – offered those details anyways, mentioning that the sex was in the missionary position, that Trump didn’t wear a condom, and that her bra was still on.
Merchan warned her at one point to only answer the questions she was being asked, but Daniels just kept going. She also testified that she’d tried to avoid Trump’s advances but he’d told her: “I thought you were serious about what you wanted,” a suggestion that a possible role on his TV show The Apprentice was contingent on sleeping with him. She also mentioned that Trump’s bodyguard was outside the room, and while she said she was sober and never felt directly threatened, she felt like she “blacked out” and doesn’t remember the beginning of the encounter.
That led Trump’s attorneys to fight for a mistrial. Trump attorney Todd Blanche argued that the power dynamic Daniels described and the mention of Trump’s bodyguard looming outside did nothing but “inflame the jury”, calling it “extraordinarily prejudicial to insert safety concerns” into a trial about business record falsification.
Merchan agreed with the defense that “there are probably some things that would have been [left] better unsaid,” but said that Daniels had been a difficult-to-control witness for the prosecution. He instructed prosecutors to talk to Daniels and instruct her to be more careful when she returned to the stand. “I’m going to deny the motion for a mistrial at this time,” he determined.
But the testimony wasn’t all just salacious details. Daniels undercut one of Trump’s defense claims. They’ve argued that he didn’t want her story about their affair to come out because he didn’t want his wife Melania to know, not because of the 2016 election. But when prosecutors asked Daniels if Trump had shown any concern about people finding out about their affair or whether he told her to keep it confidential when it first happened, she replied: “Absolutely not”.
She also offered corroborating evidence that bolstered the prosecution’s case, testifying that Trump gave her his assistant Rhona’s number, which she put into her phone as “D Trump Rona”. Rhona Graff testified last week that she had the contact information for both Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, with whom Trump also allegedly had an affair.
During cross-examination, Trump attorney Susan Necheles tried to paint Daniels as a dishonest Trump-hater with an axe to grind and a wish to see him behind bars. She got Daniels to admit she hates Trump, and when she asked if Daniels wants to see Trump behind bars, Daniels replied she wants him “held accountable”.
Necheles claimed that Daniels was “looking to extort money” from Trump with her story and sought to show that Daniels’ story about her affair with Trump had shifted over the years. She grilled Daniels about how she lost a defamation case against Trump, and why she’d consistently refused a judge’s order to pay a half-million dollars in lawyers’ fees she accrued in that case. Daniels said didn’t have that kind of money and “didn’t think it was fair”.
Much of this doesn’t go to the core of the case – whether Trump falsified business records when he repaid his fixer and attorney Michael Cohen for paying Daniels $130,000 to sign a non-disclosure agreement right before the 2016 election.
Trump was sure to point that out in the hallway after court ended. He called the day a “disaster” for prosecutors, claiming: “They have nothing on books and records and even something that should bear very little relationship to the case.”
But Daniels’ testimony gives jurors some damning context about why exactly he’d want to keep this story out of the news right before voters headed to the polls.
Sidebar: so much for that Florida classified documents trial
After months of dragging her feet to help Trump, Judge Aileen Cannon, the Trump-appointed federal judge overseeing his classified documents criminal case, has officially put his trial on ice.
Cannon issued an order late Tuesday indefinitely postponing Trump’s pending trial for willfully mishandling classified documents. She canceled the 20 May trial date (that had already been logistically impossible), and declared that she would not set a new date anytime soon.
The “finalization of a trial date at this juncture”, she wrote in the order, mentioning pre-trial and Classified Information Procedures Act (Cipa) issues “would be imprudent and inconsistent with the Court’s duty to fully and fairly consider the various pending pre-trial motions before the Court, critical CIPA issues, and additional pretrial and trial preparations necessary to present this case to a jury”.
That comes after months of seemingly deliberate delay. Cannon has refused to set timelines for necessary pre-trial steps and sided again and again with Trump. On Monday night, she temporarily froze the deadline for Trump to file his Cipa section 5 notice – the list of classified information he plans to use in his defense in the trial.
Cannon’s latest dilatory actions greatly reduce the already-slim probability that Trump will actually face charges in this case before the presidential election.
