Molly Crane-Newman and Josephine Stratman New York Daily News (TNS)
NEW YORK — Stormy Daniels is expected to return to the witness stand Thursday following her bombshell first day of testimony to be cross-examined by Donald Trump’s defense team as the former president’s hush money trial resumes in Manhattan.
In a brutal day for the presumptive Republican nominee in this year’s election, the adult film star on Tuesday divulged details of their infamous alleged tryst in a Lake Tahoe hotel room in 2006 and efforts to silence her years later.
In an at-times explicit account, Daniels described a consensual but uncomfortable sexual encounter with Trump when she was 27 after his bodyguard summoned her to his hotel room for a meal they never ate. She detailed coming out of a restroom to find Trump, then 60, sprawled out on the bed in boxers and a t-shirt and blacking out during brief sex.
The judge permitted prosecutors to elicit the graphic testimony after Trump’s lawyers called Daniels’ credibility into question in their opening statements — accusing her of extortion — in line with the strategy they’ve taken during the trial attacking the state’s witnesses.
Daniels, 45, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, told jurors she agreed to stay silent about the incident more than a decade after it occurred after Trump’s then-fixer, Michael Cohen, negotiated a $130,000 non-disclosure deal with her lawyer 11 days out from Trump’s stunning victory against Hilary Clinton.
The Louisiana native said she worried for her safety after Trump announced his candidacy, having been threatened in a Las Vegas parking lot years prior around the time she first sought to share her story with the press.
Trump, 77, has pleaded not guilty to felony charges alleging he covered up reimbursement to Cohen for handling the hush money payoff, logging it in the books as payment for legal fees.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office alleges the payment to Cohen — which came in the form of checks Trump signed from his desk in the Oval Office — capped a yearslong conspiracy to promote his candidacy by unlawful means.
Prosecutors say the scheme was born at an August 2015 meeting at Trump Tower attended by Trump, his fixer, and former tabloid publisher David Pecker, who told jurors he agreed to be the campaign’s “eyes and ears” by identifying and burying negative stories about Trump and elevating hit jobs about his opponents.
In testimony last week, jurors heard from Keith Davidson, the lawyer who repped Daniels in hush money negotiations, and former Playboy model Karen McDougal.
Davidson described dealing with a frantic Cohen in the waning days of the 2016 White House race, who urgently sought to contain the porn star’s allegations following the bombshell release of the “Access Hollywood” tape so soon before the election.
Trump denies all allegations and that he ever slept with Daniels. His lawyers have claimed an “obsessed” Cohen went rogue in paying her off that Trump believed he was paying his lawyer for legitimate legal services.
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