Stormy Daniels testifies on the witness stand as a promotional image for one of her shows featuring an image of Trump is displayed on monitors in Manhattan criminal court, Thursday, May 9, 2024, in New York. (Elizabeth Williams via AP)
A would-be gotcha moment engineered by the defense resulted in an embarrassingly brutal turnabout from the witness at the center of former President Donald Trump’s criminal woes in New York City.
Stormy Daniels, 45, returned to the stand for the second time in the hush-money trial on Thursday morning, immediately subject to cross-examination from Trump’s defense attorney Susan Necheles.
Fending off a hard-charging series of questions, the adult content creator was asked about how she came to the decision to eventually go public with her story about having sex with Trump.
The answer was likely not what the defense expected.
“Even though you had agreed that you would not discuss this supposed story and you had received a lot of money for that agreement, you then decided that you wanted to publicly say that you had sex with Donald Trump,” Necheles pressed the witness, according to a report by MSNBC personality Katie Phang.
Daniels replied: “No, nobody would ever want to publicly say that.”
The upshot of the cross-examination was geared toward establishing Daniels had a money motive for her accusation against Trump.
During her first day on the stand, Necheles aimed to raise credibility issues with the witness — eliciting testimony that there were varying motives for her telling the Trump story. Daniels and the state would have the plural motives be seen as complementary. The defense would like jurors to view the witness as avaricious and unreliable.
More Law&Crime coverage: ‘What could possibly go wrong?’: Stormy Daniels testifies in Trump hush-money trial about allegedly ‘brief’ sex, judge frustrated with prosecutors over level of detail
Throughout the back-and-forth on Thursday morning, the defense pushed the monetary angle, while Daniels tried not to budge.
“You wanted to make money from President Trump,” Necheles said to the witness at one point, according to a report by New York Daily News reporter Molly Crane-Newman.
“I never asked for money from anyone in particular; I asked to tell my story,” Daniels said — stressing she was trying “to get the truth out.”
Necheles countered the general pitch from the witness by asking her why she did not just hold a press conference if all she wanted to do was tell the Trump story, according to a report by Just Security fellow Adam Klasfeld. Daniels replied that she felt like time was running out.
Necheles countered again — saying the online news magazine Slate had expressed interest in the story, but noting that Daniels stopped talking to their reporter after she signed the nondisclosure agreement that resulted in a $130,000 payment from Michael Cohen.
“I stopped talking to numerous people because I signed the nondisclosure, and that was part of the deal,” Daniels responded.
Another effort in service of cutting down the credibility of the witness was a telephone recording the defense played for jurors — after initially playing the wrong recording.
Necheles says that this was the correct one, which is played in court. pic.twitter.com/aDE85c9Voz
— Adam Klasfeld (@KlasfeldReports) May 9, 2024
In the correct recording, Keith Davidson, Daniels’ original attorney who negotiated the hush money payment, speaks with Cohen. During their conversation, Davidson expresses a strong — and-strongly-worded — desire to get the agreement settled before the 2016 election, but attributing the words to a hypothetical rant from the boyfriend of Gina Rodriguez, who was Daniels’ manager at the time.
The witness replied that she never yelled at Davidson.
In the end, whether Daniels settled for money in lieu of getting her story out before the election or whether she was more interested in getting the money no matter what, will be up to jurors to decide.
Perhaps instrumental to that decision will be how reliable the assembled Manhattanites find Daniels in general.
At another point, Necheles sought to raise doubts about the credibility of the witness by pointing to discrepancies between various accounts about the night she claims to have met Trump at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe, according to a report by Newsweek reporter Katherine Fung.
The profit motive was ever-present in the typically drafty, Chinatown-adjacent courtroom at 100 Centre Street.
Necheles, at another point, seized upon Daniels selling things like a candle taking credit for Trump’s indictment — and other merchandise related to the 45th president’s criminal exposure.
Again, Daniels offered a scathing riposte.
“Not unlike Mr. Trump,” the witness said.
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