Stormy Daniels spent hours on the witness stand Tuesday, recounting details of an alleged tryst with former President Trump and how she ended up in a hush money agreement to keep it quiet ahead of the 2016 election.
Daniels was so far the highest-profile witness in the Manhattan district attorney’s prosecution of Trump over a $130,000 payment made to her to not spill her allegations of the one-night affair.
Cross-examination of Daniels grew testy with Trump’s attorney attempting to paint the porn actress as a liar and an extortionist. Daniels is expected to retake the stand when the trial resumes on Thursday.
Follow below for a recap from New York.
After court adjourned for the day, Trump told reporters in the hallway of the courthouse that it was a “very revealing day” of testimony, arguing it was helpful to his case.
“So this was a very big day, a very revealing day as you see a case that’s totally falling apart,” Trump said. “They have nothing on books and records, and even something that should be very little relationship to the case is just a disaster for the DA.”
— Brett Samuels
Merchan dismissed the jury for the day, following hours of salacious and sometimes heated testimony from Daniels.
The porn actress is expected to resume her testimony, under cross-examination from Trump’s attorneys, on Thursday.
— Ella Lee
Trump was asked during a brief break as he reentered the courtroom how the cross-examination by his defense team was going of Stormy Daniels, to which he responded “very well.”
— Brett Samuels
Necheles’s cross-examination of Daniels has been largely aimed at portraying her as an unreliable witness.
The Trump attorney is attempting to poke holes in Daniels’s story, at one point suggesting Daniels’s “whole story” about being threatened to keep quiet is “not true.” Necheles suggested the man who allegedly approached her “did not exist.”
“He absolutely existed,” Daniels said.
“No he didn’t,” Necheles retorted.
Necheles has also cast doubt on various moments in Daniels’s timeline, implying they are misremembered.
— Ella Lee
Necheles pressed Daniels about whether she has made money off of telling her story about her alleged affair with Trump.
“I am making money by telling my story about what happened to me,” Daniels told Necheles.
When asked if telling that story has made her “a lot of money,” Daniels told Necheles, “It also cost me a lot of money.”
— Lauren Sforza
Necheles pressed Daniels on a tweet from Nov. 9, 2022, where she wrote: “I don’t have to pay him shit and I’ll never give that orange turd a dime.”
Necheles asked if she was making fun of how Trump looked, and Daniels agreed that she was. When asked if she called him names all the time, she agreed.
“He made fun of me first!” Daniels said.
Daniels said earlier in the testimony that she had not paid any legal fees yet to Trump in a separate case because it “wasn’t fair.”
— Lauren Sforza
Necheles’s cross-examination of Daniels is off to a testy start.
When asked if it was “correct” to say that Daniels hates Trump, Daniels responded: “Yes.”
When asked if she wanted him to go to jail, Daniels responded, “I want him to be held accountable.”
At one point, Necheles seemed to raise her voice to Daniels when asking about why she had not paid money owed to Trump for legal fees in a separate case that has been dismissed.
“You didn’t pay anything out of your pocket, did you? You didn’t take anything out of your pocket and pay it to Donald Trump did you,” Necheles asked, before an objection was raised.
— Lauren Sforza
Prosecutors concluded their direct questioning of Daniels just after 3 p.m.
Now, Trump’s team will cross-examine Daniels.
— Lauren Sforza
Daniels testified that she hasn’t paid Trump’s legal fees in a separate case because she does not consider it to be “fair.”
She also said she doesn’t “have the means” to pay the judgment.
Daniels sued Trump for defamation in April 2018, a few months after their alleged sexual encounter went public, over Trump questioning her credibility on social media.
The lawsuit was ultimately dismissed under the First Amendment, and Daniels was ordered to pay Trump’s legal fees.
Daniels has said her attorney at the time, Michael Avenatti, had filed the lawsuit without her permission.
— Ella Lee
Daniels described Trump’s onetime personal attorney, Michael Cohen, as “the fixer” in her testimony Tuesday.
Defense attorneys have asked several witnesses questions aiming to distance Cohen from his well-established title — an effort Daniels’s testimony could hinder.
— Ella Lee
Daniels testified that her life descended into “chaos” after The Wall Street Journal published an article in January 2018 detailing her encounter with Trump.
She said the story “blew my cover,” causing friends and family members to ask questions and her daughter to be “ostracized from play groups.”
The Wall Street Journal published news of the hush money payment nearly one year after Trump took office.
Read the WSJ article at issue here.
— Ella Lee
Stormy Daniels has retaken the stand after the lunch break.
Hoffinger, one of the prosecutors from the district attorney’s office, stepped outside before Daniels reentered the court room to advise her to “stay focused on the question,” Merchan said.
Prosecutors are resuming their direct questioning of Daniels.
— Lauren Sforza
Trump’s attorneys have moved for a mistrial in his first criminal case, citing Daniels’s salacious testimony Tuesday.
“The guardrails for this witness, answering questions from the government, were just thrown to the side,” Trump attorney Todd Blanche said.
He suggested that Daniels’s story has changed since 2016 from a consensual affair to be more dubious and that some of the details the jury was allowed to hear, including that he didn’t use a condom, were inappropriate.
“How can you just let them ring the bell?” Blanche said.
— Ella Lee
In the latest edition of her Substack newsletter, advice columnist E. Jean Carroll took note of Stormy Daniels’s testimony.
“Admirable and Judicious Reader! Stormy is testifying. How do you think she’s doing?” Carroll began the newsletter, inviting readers to submit a comment.
Carroll has won nearly $100 million from Trump in his two most recent jury trials on sexual battery and defamation claims. Those civil lawsuits came after the advice columnist claimed Trump assaulted her in the 1990s. Trump denies her story and is appealing both verdicts.
— Zach Schonfeld
After the lunch break, Trump strode into the courtroom shortly before 2 p.m.
A courtroom sketch artist’s drawing, an abstract rendering of the day’s proceedings, caught his eye and caused him to smile.
— Ella Lee