Stormy Daniels defends herself against the lawyer’s attacks in the style of Trump

NEW YORK – Donald Trump, the former president, and Stormy Daniels, the longtime porn actor, despise each other. But when Daniels returned to the stand at Trump’s criminal trial on Thursday, his lawyers sounded much the same.

He wrote more than a dozen self-aggrandizing books; She wrote extensive memoirs. He mocked her appearance on social media; she shot back with a scatological insult. He sold a Bible valued at $59.99; She peddled a $40 candle labeled “Stormy, Saint of the Accusation,” with her image draped in a Christ-like robe.

During grueling cross-examination on Thursday, Trump’s lawyers tried to discredit Daniels as a greedy extortionist who used a temporary closeness to Trump to gain fame and fortune. But the more the defense attacked her self-promoting merchandise and online messages, the more Daniels resembled the man she was testifying against: a master of marketing, a connoisseur of social media scorn.

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“No different than Mr. Trump,” she said on the witness stand, although unlike him, she did so without the power and platform of the presidency.

Daniels’ appearance threw the proceedings into turmoil as the defense asked the judge to declare a mistrial in the first criminal trial of an American president. They argued that Daniels’ graphic description of a sexual encounter with Trump caused irreparable harm to the defense.

But Judge Juan M. Merchan rejected the request and rebuked the defense attorneys. He pointed out that her decision to deny the rendezvous at all opened the way for many of her explicit statements. Daniels offered jurors a first-person account of the encounter with Trump, helping prosecutors strengthen their belief in an incident at the heart of the case.

Their appearance also laid the groundwork for the prosecution’s star witness, Michael D. Cohen, who is expected to testify on Monday, according to people familiar with the matter. Cohen, Trump’s former fixer, bought Daniels’ silence in the closing stages of the 2016 presidential campaign, which led to the indictments against Trump, who is accused of falsifying records to cover up the scandal.

In nearly eight hours of powerful testimony over two days, Daniels told her story of a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006. She described accepting the $130,000 hush money payment during his first presidential campaign. And as she faced his lawyers’ combative questions about subtle changes in her history, she oscillated between defiance and vulnerability.

After a shaky performance in the stands earlier in the week, Daniels conceded almost nothing on Thursday. She was exhausted. Now she was nimble as she lashed out at her questioner.

Susan Necheles, a Trump lawyer, questioned Daniels about her account of a one-night stand at a celebrity golf tournament in Nevada: “You made this all up, didn’t you?”

Daniels responded with a firm “no.”

When Necheles suggested that the porn actress had experience with “fake sex stories,” Daniels responded that the sex in her films was “very real, just like what happened to me in this room.” And when Necheles suggested that her experience producing films showed she knew how to spin fiction, Daniels replied: “I would have written it much better.”

Daniels, wearing a dark green dress and long black cardigan, displayed sensitivity that was at odds with the defense’s gold-digging portrayal. When a prosecutor asked her one final question — whether her experience speaking about Trump had been positive or negative — she choked up.

“Negative,” said Daniels, who barely uttered a word and appeared to be on the verge of tears.

Trump’s lawyers expressed disbelief and noted that Daniels had denied the affair at various points. They uncovered inconsistencies, most notably Daniels’ insistence that she wanted to spread her story to the world and had little interest in money. Necheles highlighted Daniels’ efforts to sell the story to both the media and Trump, suggesting that Daniels had actually put him down.

“That’s what you asked in 2016: for money to be able to tell your story?” Necheles asked pointedly and added: “That was your decision, right?”

Daniels demurred, saying she “accepted an offer from Cohen” in the final days of the 2016 campaign because she was “running out of time.”

But Necheles noted that she could have told her story for free. She pointed to evidence that Daniels had flirted with it but cut off the discussion with a Slate magazine reporter.

“You could have gone out and given a press conference any day of the week,” Necheles said, “but you chose not to, right?”

The defense damaged Daniels’ credibility after she spent much of her earlier testimony describing an encounter with Trump in a sprawling hotel suite in Lake Tahoe, Nevada, in 2006.

Daniels painted the scene in minute detail – so much so that the judge threw her out on Tuesday. She told jurors about Trump’s underwear, the sexual postures they adopted and his flirtatious chatter in which he compared her to his daughter: “She’s smart and blonde and beautiful, and people underestimate her too.”

But while the testimony was impressive, it was something of a sideshow to the main event of the trial. There is nothing illegal about a married man having sex with a porn actor, nor is there anything inherently criminal about paying a person for their silence.

And Daniels knew nothing about the documents that prosecutors say Trump falsified to hide his repayment to Cohen for the $130,000 hush-money deal.

Citing their distance from the files, Trump’s lawyers filed for a mistrial for the second time this week, arguing that Daniels’ testimony was irrelevant and prejudicial. “It’s almost inconceivable that this is a docket case,” argued his lead attorney, Todd Blanche. The defense also requested that a gag order be modified to allow Trump to challenge Daniels’ testimony.

Merchan rejected both requests and criticized Trump’s lawyers for missteps in the prosecution’s questioning of Daniels, saying they did not raise objections often enough. He also pointed out that the former president’s insistence on denying any sexual encounter with Daniels allowed prosecutors to present evidence that it actually occurred.

“This, I think, allows people to do whatever they can to rehabilitate them and validate their story,” he said.

After Daniels left the stand, prosecutors called witnesses more directly involved in the files. They interviewed Rebecca Manochio, a young accountant at the Trump Organization, who described how she sent Cohen’s checks, his refunds for payments to Daniels, to Washington for Trump to sign during his presidency.

They also called Madeleine Westerhout, one of Trump’s most trusted aides during his first years in the White House. She sat at a desk just outside the Oval Office and coordinated many of his communications, including an important meeting with Cohen just weeks into his term. Cohen is expected to testify that they discussed the plan to falsify the records – recording the payments as ordinary “legal fees” – and Westerhout confirmed that the meeting was scheduled.

She also confirmed that Trump paid close attention to the checks he signed at the White House.

This statement, which seems somewhat disappointing after two days of sex and scandal stories from a porn actor, could nevertheless confirm parts of Cohen’s story. And ultimately, the verdict could hinge on his words — as well as whether jurors blame the prosecution or Trump for subjecting them to hours of meandering testimony.

For most of Thursday, Daniels appeared calm and controlled as she argued over the most trivial facts. She never broke down, even when Necheles hostilely accused her of capitalizing on her brush with Trump’s fame.

When Necheles showed an advertisement for her strip club tour called “Make America Horny Again” on the courtroom screens, Daniels said she hated that slogan.

When the defense played a recording of Daniels’ attorney telling Cohen that she was desperate for money, Daniels denied saying anything of the sort.

And when Necheles accused Daniels of extortion, noting, “You threatened to hurt Trump if he didn’t give you money,” the witness returned to one of her most common refrains of the week: “Wrong.”

Daniels said that after paying costs, including legal fees, she made less than $100,000 from the hush money. And despite her vast selection of online merchandise — including T-shirts and comics, some of which targeted the anti-Trump resistance — she said she has yet to turn a profit.

“It covers my travel, my expenses and my security,” she explained as Trump leaned forward, staring at the screen displaying exhibits of her entrepreneurial endeavors.

Daniels noted that she was hardly unique. Trump is himself a branding virtuoso and a champion of unbridled capitalism. He once wrote a book called “How to Get Rich.”

Confronted with her schoolyard insults directed at the former president, she again called him an instigator.

He had belittled her appearance and called her “horseface.” She mocked him as an “orange bastard.”

“I’m not a human toilet,” she said Thursday, “so if they want to make fun of me, I can make fun of them.”

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