Stormy Daniels’ sexual assault testimony

MSNBC legal expert Danny Cevallos was not impressed by the blatant disclosure of details that emerged Stormy Daniels Testimony in the hush money trial against the former president Donald Trump.

Daniels took the stand Tuesday and provided details about her sexual encounter with Trump, which Morning Joe described as “graphic,” “salacious” and “frightening,” which Cevallos said could be damaging to the prosecution.

“If you’re a prosecutor and you’re building your case and you’re doing a risk-reward analysis for every witness, you have to decide, ‘Can I get this information from somewhere else with less risk?'” Cevallos said of Daniels’ potentially disastrous testimony in the case Prosecutors say Trump’s legal team is seeking a mistrial as a result.

“What part of the statement would you take out and take up on appeal?” Joe Scarborough asked his guest. “What do you think is the strongest evidence, concrete and reversible, that it was unduly prejudicial and not worth the probative value?”

“I think Stormy Daniels’ statement could have been concluded with three words along the lines of ‘we had sex,'” Cevallos replied. “Anything else was probably unnecessary.” The discussion continued:

Cevallos: Statements like, ‘He was a lot bigger than me physically and I wasn’t intimidated,’ but it’s out there,” Cevallos said, quoting Daniels. “He was taller than me. He blocked the door,” he continued. “That goes back to the problem. This is not a sexual assault case and the defense will argue. And right or wrong, that’s what they’ll argue on appeal. This type of testimony made this a quasi-sexual assault case that cast the defendant in an unnecessarily bad light, in a way that makes the bell impossible to ring.”

“It was really helpful that Stormy was telling Daniels in an environment where her story had all this value because it was close to a campaign, even a deposition for that matter, where Donald Trump didn’t seem worried about Melania finding out that that was good. And they actually brought this about in a very clever way. All the evidence about the transaction between Stormy Daniels and, yes, the underlying incident, the fact that they had sex, that she came there and said that they had sex, that’s all relevant. But you always ask yourself: Can you get this information from a less risky witness? We are only halfway through the cross-examination. Things could get worse. Maybe it won’t. Maybe she’ll survive and be okay.

But Stormy Daniels is one of those witnesses who tends to not only answer the question posed, but add her own editorial. And that’s a really dangerous thing, I promise you. The prosecutor sits at her desk and says: Please just answer the question. Just answer the question. Please, just the question. No editorial team.

Joe Scarborough: Sounds like you’ve done this before.

Cevallos: So often. Only so often.

Watch above via MSNBC.

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