“If this story were untrue, I would have written it much better.”

Photo by Angela Weiss-Pool/Getty Images

A lawyer for Donald Trump this morning delved further into changing details in Stormy Daniels’ accounts of a 2006 sexual encounter with Trump over the years – and received plenty of pushback from the adult entertainer, who was named a high-profile figure in Trump’s hush money trial Witness appeared.

During a fast-paced, nearly three-hour back-and-forth sparring session, Susan Necheles also said that Daniels — after raising $130,000 for a nondisclosure agreement — busily sold her memoirs, hawked merchandise, appeared on a reality TV show and sat in a documentary, promoted herself as a spiritual medium and toured as an adult dancer, using her “alleged” sexual encounter with Trump as a hook.

Necheles estimated that Daniels made a million dollars or more from various ventures after gaining notoriety through an adulterous sexual encounter with Trump, and she said Daniels once told a writer for Slate, “Either you wanted money, or you wanted money.” would harm him politically.”

Daniels responded that she was just doing her job and paying the “extraordinary” legal fees she had accrued from her dispute with Trump. She testified that she “hated” the marketing for a U.S. tour of strip clubs called “Make America Horny Again” – a reference to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan – even though she posted the promotional posters on her Instagram .

Necheles pressed Daniels on discrepancies between previous reports and her testimony on Tuesday, including whether Trump personally invited her to dinner at his Lake Tahoe hotel suite in the summer of 2006, whether they actually broke bread in the hotel suite and whether Daniels Feeling too powerless to do so, she refused to have sex with Trump that night.

Necheles said Daniels has appeared in or directed hundreds of pornographic films, but testified Tuesday that she felt “light-headed” when she saw Trump waiting for her in bed in his boxers and a T-shirt.

Daniels replied that her reaction was to unexpectedly find a man twice her age half undressed as she exited the bathroom.

Necheles also questioned Daniel’s statement about “a power imbalance” between her and Trump in the moments before the sexual encounter. “You wrote in your book that you made him your bitch,” Necheles said, referring to a passage from Daniels’ 2018 memoir: Full disclosurein which she described defending herself against Trump during a long conversation that preceded the sexual encounter.

“Ma’am,” Necheles continued, “you claim ‘I made him my slut,’ but ‘I can’t say no to having sex with him?'”

A grand jury in Manhattan indicted the former US president on March 30, 2023, accusing Trump of conspiring to influence the 2016 election by falsifying business records in order to compensate lawyer Michael Cohen for the US$130,000 to hide the dollars that Cohen had paid Daniels for her silence. Necheles called out a tweet from that day in which Daniels wrote about drinking champagne and directed other tweeters to her merch site.

“And that’s how you shilled your goods, right?” demanded Necheles.

“That’s me doing my job,” Daniels replied.

Later, under renewed instructions from Assistant District Attorney Susan Hoffinger, Daniels said she never testified before the grand jury.

“So you had nothing to do with the charges in this case?” Hoffinger asked, a question that drew a quick objection from Necheles — which was overruled by Judge Juan Merchan.

“I didn’t,” Daniels replied.

When asked by Hoffinger whether the entire Trump experience was “a net positive or a net negative in your life,” Daniels paused and said, “Negative.” She had previously said that in the context of her attempt , breaking the confidentiality agreement, having to hire security, taking extra precautions for her daughter, moving twice and paying legal fees.

Hoffinger also sought to clarify the statement on Daniels’ tweets, pointing out that she sometimes responded to hostile commenters. When Daniels posted that she would “dance in the streets” if Trump was “selected” for prison, it was in response to a tweeter who called her “a disgusting degenerate prostitute” who “takes money to help an innocent person.” to frame a man,” meaning Trump. The tweeter predicted he will be “selected by a landslide in 2024.”

Hoffinger also said that in Daniels’ failed lawsuit to get out of the nondisclosure agreement, Trump’s lawyer confirmed in June 2018 court filings that Trump had compensated Cohen.

Daniels left the witness stand after two days of testimony. She was followed by Rebecca Manochio, an accounting employee at the Trump Organization, who pursued a trail of records showing that Trump’s checks in 2017 — which prosecutors say included illegal refunds to Cohen — first went via FedEx to Trump’s bodyguard Keith Schiller at a home address in Washington, D.C., before being sent back with Trump’s signature.

Daniels said in her testimony that she met Schiller at the 2006 celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe, where a sexual encounter occurred, and that it was Schiller who extended the dinner invitation.

While Necheles accused her of telling lies to make money, Daniels defended the veracity of her account, saying, “If this story were untrue, I would have written it much better.”