Prosecutors dove straight into the seamy details of the hush money case against former President Donald Trump on Tuesday by putting adult-film actress Stormy Daniels on the stand to testify about an alleged sexual encounter in a Lake Tahoe suite in 2006 and efforts to sell her story before the presidential election a decade later.
Mr. Trump tapped his attorneys’ arms, shook his head or stared straight ahead as Ms. Daniels testified about Mr. Trump’s satin pajamas and bed maneuvers.
“I had my clothes and my shoes off. I removed my bra. We were in missionary position,” Ms. Daniels said. She said she left as quickly as she could.
The former president denies the encounter and repeatedly urged his attorneys to object during testimony. Later, he told reporters that the trial had veered off track.
“This is just a disaster for the DA, the Soros-backed DA. This whole case is just a disaster,” Mr. Trump said.
Suggesting the case was a political stunt to hurt his White House run against President Biden, he said the time in court diverted him from the campaign trail.
SEE ALSO: Trump says Stormy Daniels’ testimony backfired: ‘This whole case is just a disaster’
“I should be out campaigning right now. I’m leading in all the polls. I’d like to be campaigning. We’ll be leading by a lot more,” he said.
Defense attorneys said Ms. Daniels’ testimony slipped far beyond the guardrails the court had set. They moved for a mistrial.
State Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan said some of Ms. Daniels’ comments went too far, but he rejected the motion for a mistrial. He said he would give a limiting instruction to the jury about aspects of her testimony.
Still, the sordid details in Ms. Daniels’ testimony could form the basis of an appeal if Mr. Trump is convicted.
Ms. Daniels is a central figure in the case because she worked with an agent to sell the story about the alleged encounter once Mr. Trump started campaigning in 2015.
Ms. Daniels said they didn’t get much interest from news outlets. After the October 2016 leak of an “Access Hollywood” tape in which Mr. Trump spoke crudely about women, Mr. Trump and his attorney Michael Cohen offered $130,000 so Ms. Daniels wouldn’t disclose the story.
SEE ALSO: Defense gets crack at Stormy Daniels, highlights her hatred for Trump
“They were interested in paying for the story, which was the best thing that could happen because then my husband wouldn’t find out but there would still be documentation,” Ms. Daniels said. “I didn’t care about the amount. I just wanted to get it done.”
The deal almost died after a deadline for payment. Ms. Daniels received $96,000 after her agent and attorney got their cuts. Ms. Daniels sued to get out of the disclosure agreement in 2018 and wrote a book, “Full Disclosure,” about her life and interactions with Mr. Trump.
Prosecutors argue that Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen criminally concealed the payment to Ms. Daniels through checks and business entries that show intent to commit election and tax offenses. Mr. Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records.
Even if convicted, Mr. Trump is unlikely to face serious prison time under the records charges. The facts in the case have been litigated in public for nearly eight years.
Still, the scene Tuesday was remarkable: A person who has sex on camera for a living was testifying against a former president who is the presumptive Republican nominee in the November presidential election.
The central irony was that allegations suppressed in 2016 were told, in excruciating detail, in open court six months before the 2024 election.
Judge Merchan allowed prosecutors to elicit the eyebrow-raising testimony to establish Ms. Daniels’ credibility but drew the line at descriptions of genitalia or other sordid details. At times, the judge scolded the prosecution over the “unnecessary” level of detail.
Mr. Trump’s son Eric sat in the courtroom’s front row during the salacious testimony.
Mr. Trump’s attorneys began cross-examination by confirming Ms. Daniels’ hatred of Mr. Trump.
“You want him to go to jail?” Trump attorney Susan Necheles asked.
“If he’s convicted,” Ms. Daniels said.
The defense also established that Ms. Daniels is reluctant to pay Mr. Trump the $560,000 in legal fees she owes after losing a defamation lawsuit to him.
“You despise him, and you call him names,” Ms. Necheles said.
Ms. Daniels said that was because Mr. Trump had called her names in his social media posts.
Through questioning, the defense argued that Ms. Daniels sought to profit from her claims about Mr. Trump and exaggerated her story accordingly.
“You’re making this up as you sit there, right?” Ms. Necheles said about Ms. Daniels’ testimony. Ms. Daniels denied it.
During a break in the cross-examination, Mr. Trump said he thought it was going “very well.”
Ms. Daniels testified earlier that she was 27 when she declined a dinner invitation that Mr. Trump delivered through his bodyguard in Lake Tahoe. A reconsideration led to the hotel suite encounter.
Ms. Daniels said she talked with Mr. Trump for about two hours in the hotel suite about her family and how the pornographic industry worked, including testing for sexually transmitted diseases.
Ms. Daniels testified that Mr. Trump stripped down while she was in the bathroom before they had sex.
She said she saw Mr. Trump in public the next day with Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger.
Ms. Daniels said she told people that she met Mr. Trump in his room but told only a few close friends about the alleged sexual encounter. Mr. Trump called her frequently in the months afterward with updates about a possible appearance on his television show, “The Apprentice,” she testified.
“He always talked,” she said, “about when we could get together again, did I miss him, and he always called me ‘honeybunch.’”
• This article is based in part on wire service reports.