Stormy Daniels’ second day on the witness stand started with a fiery clash on Thursday, as Donald Trump’s lawyer zeroed in on the glaring contradiction that the porn star now says she wanted “the truth to be printed” about her sexual affair with the politician—when instead she readily chose to be paid by him for her silence in 2016.
The panel of 18 jurors watched intently as Susan Necheles, the former president’s defense lawyer, tore into the adult-film actress/director for what she made out to be a lame attempt to recast her role in the scandal.
“In 2016 you were trying to sell your story, right?” Necheles began.
“Yes,” Daniels responded, sitting comfortably by the judge.
“At this point, you were asking for money. You wanted money from President Trump, right?” Necheles continued.
“No… I never asked for money from President Trump… I never asked for money from anyone in particular. I asked for money to tell my story… to get the truth out,” Daniels countered.
But then Necheles pounced, her voice now carrying an air of ridicule.
“But you entered into a negotiation for a nondisclosure agreement right?” she asked.
“My attorneys did,” Daniels said, leaning into what’s become a go-to defensive stance by trying to distance herself from the matter by blaming the lawyer who cut the deal for her.
“But that was your choice right?” Necheles queried, leaning back against the waist-high wooden wall separating the public pews from what had become a courtroom battle arena.
“Not necessarily. I wanted to do a press conference,” Daniels said.
Until now, jurors have heard various versions of the porn star’s explanation that she had felt threatened long after the 2006 one-night stand with Trump at a golf tournament by a stranger who allegedly approached the new mom and her daughter at a parking lot in 2011 and warned her to keep quiet about the affair. That unproven detail has become the lynchpin to her subsequent story that she only sought to be paid for her story in the closing weeks of the 2016 election—when Trump was in the final stretches of his ultimately successful Republican presidential campaign—to somehow protect her in case he or anyone else would threaten her in the future.
Necheles, who has called that entire theory into question, saw an entry into further exploring that far-fetched notion.
“So why didn’t you do that?” Necheles asked about the supposed plans to hold a press conference.
“Because we were running out of time—” Daniels started.
“You were running out of time to get money, right?” Necheles shot back.
“No, to get the story out,” Daniels said, her voice wavering.
“But you chose not to, right?” Necheles said, nodding assertively.
“I chose to be safe,” the porn star asserted.
“You chose to make money right?” the lawyer pressed on.
“I chose to take the non-disclosure,” Daniels relented.
Thursday marked Day Two of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office’s key witness on the stand during its criminal trial against Trump, the first in the country’s history involving a former American president. Trump is charged with 34 felony counts of faking business records for covering up the affair by paying Daniels $130,000 through the man who was then his lawyer, Michael Cohen.
The cross-examination only got worse for her when Trump’s legal team brought up a Jan. 10, 2018 public statement the porn star released denying that the sex ever happened when she was initially confronted by journalists investigating the matter. The statement was drafted by Keith Davidson, the same Beverly Hills lawyer who negotiated the hush money deal on her behalf—and signed by the porn star herself.
“I recently became aware that certain news outlets are alleging that I had a sexual and/or romantic affair with Donald Trump many, many, many years ago. I am stating with complete clarity that this is absolutely false,” read the signed statement, which went as far as claiming Trump was “a complete gentleman to me.”
“Well to be clear, I did not write this,” Daniels tried to explain.
“But you signed it right?” Necheles shot back.