A key witness took the stand on Tuesday in the so-called “hush money” trial of former President Donald Trump, prompting a response from the judge overseeing the case.
Stormy Daniels, an adult film performer whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, appeared on the witness stand again claimed that she engaged in a 2006 affair with the former president. President Trump has categorically denied the encounter ever took place.
Prosecutors say that President Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen paid $130,000 to Ms. Daniels during the 2016 campaign in a bid to buy her silence about the alleged affair. At issue is the nature of the payments, and they have argued that the payments were falsely labeled to interfere with the 2016 election, adding that those payments should have been marked as campaign-related expenses.
The former president has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records in the case. He has argued that the trial is merely an attempt to keep him off the 2024 campaign trial.
In her testimony, she recalled that the former president told her in a hotel room that she “should go on his television show,” referring to the “Celebrity Apprentice” program that he hosted and starred in. “What if I lose on the first episode?” she claimed she asked him.
Trump’s lawyers have said that it was Ms. Daniels who suggested that she go on his reality TV show, not him. She also made claims about visiting President Trump at his hotel in Lake Tahoe, California, during a golf tournament. At one point, she claimed, the former president suggested that she make a phone call to a friend from the hotel room, which she did.
A break was then called, and Judge Juan Merchan admonished the prosecutors, saying that “the degree of detail that we are going into here is just unnecessary,” referring to her testimony.
After she returned to the stand, Ms. Daniels alleged the affair between her and President Trump occurred at the Lake Tahoe hotel. Prosecutor Susan Hoffinger attempted to elicit more details, but the judge sustained to objections from defense lawyers.
‘No Time’
Before she was called to testify, President Trump wrote on Truth Social Tuesday that his team had “no time” to prepare for the witness and described the situation as “unprecedented.”
That post was apparently deleted later in the day, according to an Epoch Times review of his social media account. He’s currently under a gag order that prohibits him from speaking about witnesses and other individuals connected to the trial.
In the now-deleted post, the former president then accused Judge Juan Merchan of being biased and partisan, noting that the judge warned Monday that he would possibly order him jailed for violating his gag order.
Before her testimony, Judge Merchan said Ms. Daniels would be allowed to testify about the basic details of the encounter. President Trump’s defense lawyer Susan Necheles objected to that directive, arguing that testimony was peripheral to a case centered on financial records.
However, Ms. Hoffinger, the prosecutor, said the testimony was needed to complete the story and establish her credibility, which the judge allowed.
President Trump’s lawyers denied Ms. Daniels’s claims about the encounter, arguing that she was seeking a role on President Trump’s former reality TV show, “The Apprentice.”
In a recent social media post, President Trump described Ms. Daniels and his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, as “sleaze bags,” with his lawyers previously arguing that they were only out to bolster their respective careers with their claims about him.
And last week, the former president accused the judge of establishing rules to make the trial become “as salacious as possible” to harm his candidacy for president.
“He’s trying to make it as salacious as possible by allowing testimony that has nothing to do with the case,” the former president told reporters at the court last week. “He wants to make it a salacious case to try and hurt Trump. But it’s having the opposite effect.”
Earlier Letter
In January 2018, Mr. Cohen said the alleged affair was a rumor that had been around since 2011. In a 2018 letter that President Trump posted on his social media account last month, Ms. Daniels wrote that rumors of the affair were false.
But months later, she changed her story during a CBS News’ “60 Minutes” interview and said an affair took place. She also claimed years ago that she was under pressure to issue the letter due to legal threats.
Meanwhile, her former attorney, Michael Avenatti, recently told the New York Post in an exclusive interview from prison that he believes she’s lying about the affair, testifying in the trial only to obtain more publicity.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
From The Epoch Times
