The star witness of the first criminal trial against Donald Trump took the floor this morning in the Manhattan court. Under the uncomfortable gaze of the tycoon, Stormy Daniels has described in great detail the sexual encounter that the two had at a resort on the shore of Lake Tahoe in 2006. Trump, who claims that this relationship never took place, bribed through his former lawyer Michael Cohen to the porn actress in 2016, in the middle of the election campaign, so that she would not speak publicly about it. And today he faces the first criminal trial against a former president in the history of the United States.
Trump is accused of 34 crimes related to that payment, of $130,000, which he reimbursed Cohen a year later and declared as his company's legal expenses. Specifically, he is accused of document falsification, aggravated because, according to the prosecution, he served in the commission of another crime against electoral campaign financing laws.
Called to testify by District Attorney Alvin Bragg, the actress – accustomed to the public eye in recent television interviews and podcasts – has begun talking about her life journey, from childhood until she started in the porn industry at the age of 23, first as an actress and later as a screenwriter and director. Then, the prosecutor's questions have guided her to her first interactions with Trump, a mogul who at the beginning of the century had already been a celebrity for two decades and whose television show, The Apprentice, was enjoying its peak of popularity.
In 2006, the two were photographed in a tent at the resort on the shore of Lake Tahoe, California. Trump was then 60 years old; Daniels, 27. Susan Hoffinger, of the prosecution team, has projected this famous photo in the New York criminal courtroom, in anticipation of a dozen members of the jury, who in the coming weeks must reach a verdict and could send the Republican candidate to prison before the November elections.
Daniels has described how Trump's bodyguard, Keith Schiller, approached her to invite her to dinner with the mogul, an invitation she initially rejected, but ended up agreeing at the insistence of her publicist. When they finally met, Daniels recalled that Trump received her in the resort suite dressed in silk pajamas, which she asked him to change out of, to which the tycoon agreed and dressed in more formal clothes.
As Daniels spoke from the stand this morning, Trump showed his discomfort, sighing and whispering in the ear of the lawyer leading his defense, Todd Blanche. The judge presiding over the case, Juan Merchan, has asked the actress to speak more slowly, because, perhaps due to nerves and the traumatic memory of that episode, she was testifying at an accelerated pace, according to the journalists present in the room.
With a photographic memory, Daniels has detailed the meeting with Trump. He asked her about the porn industry and its working conditions, its health insurance and, specifically, the availability of sexually transmitted disease (STD) testing. As Daniels specified, he wanted to make sure he was free of STDs to have condomless sex with her. The tycoon told her that he reminded her of her daughter Ivanka: “she is intelligent, blonde and beautiful, and people tend to underestimate her.”
During dinner, she asked him if he had a wife, to which he told her not to worry, because Trump and Melania, who had married a year earlier, "we don't even sleep in the same room." She has also described that she was surprised by the magnate's airs of grandeur, who constantly interrupted her while she was speaking, and asked: “Are you always so rude? Are you always so arrogant and pompous? It seems like you don't even know how to hold a conversation.”
Daniels' statements are not a dish of good taste for a man obsessed with controlling his public image. Her defense strategy is based on characterizing the actress as a woman who only sought to take advantage of her fame to gain notoriety in the sector. Daniels has tried to dismantle an argument, first explaining that her relationship with Trump has cost her some dismissal, and then ensuring that the tycoon even offered her at that dinner to participate in The Apprentice in exchange for sex.
After dinner, Daniels went to the bathroom of the hotel suite and, when she returned, she found the tycoon waiting for her in bed in his boxers and a T-shirt. “What have I read wrong to get here?” she asked herself, and stated that she tried to get out of it, but he blocked her way, although not in a threatening way. Later, she has claimed that she lost consciousness for a moment, even though she did not take alcohol or drugs, something she did not mention in any of her recent interviews. However, it is common for the version of a person traumatized by a sexual encounter – as she has described herself – to evolve over the years, which could become relevant in this case.
Daniels responded with a resounding “yes” when the prosecution asked her if she had relations with Trump in that bed. He has assured that she was not opposed to sex, but she did not explicitly consent to it either, and has stated that she did not enjoy the encounter because she felt an “imbalance” of power between them.
When he began to describe in detail the sexual encounter and the positions used, the defense protested and Judge Merchan approved his objection. The judge has warned prosecutors on several occasions that it is not necessary to go into such detail, but Daniels' vivid recollection of the encounter is part of the prosecution's strategy to convince the jury that the sexual relationship took place and that Therefore, Trump's bribery sought to hide a true story to "adulterate" the elections.
Next, Daniels explained that he met the magnate again in 2007, first at Trump Tower and then in Los Angeles. That was the last time she, presumably, met him, and she has assured that she never asked him to keep the relationship a secret. She first did it in 2016, she has claimed, when Trump became the Republican nominee and she threatened to sell the story to the media.
At this moment, the actress continues with her statement from the New York court, which faces its third week of the first criminal trial of a former president in the history of the United States. In the coming days, the appearance of another important witness is expected , Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen, and the verdict could come late this month or early next month. Three more criminal trials await the magnate in Washington, Georgia and Florida, which he is managing to postpone through resources, and which may not arrive until after the November elections.
