US porn star Stormy Daniels has told a jury in explicit detail about her alleged sexual encounter with Donald Trump and the intimidation she faced by people trying to stop the tryst from becoming public.
In another astonishing moment ahead of this year’s election, Daniels has testified for the first time in Trump’s hush money trial about the night she says she had sex with him, recounting how she accepted a request to meet him at his hotel room, spanked him “on the butt” with a rolled up magazine, and even asked about his wife Melania.
“We don’t even sleep in the same room,” she said Trump told her that night in 2006.
The evidence emerged on the fourth week of the former president’s historic trial, in which he stands accused of falsifying business records to cover up his alleged encounter with Daniels in the lead up to the 2016 election.
Trump, who has denied both the affair and that he fraudulently paid hush money to silence it, looked increasingly irritated during the testimony, occasionally shaking his head and passing notes to his lawyers as they prepared for their cross-examination.
His son Eric, the only family member who has been in court to support him so far, sat stone-faced in the public gallery.
Under questioning by prosecutor Susan Hoffman, Daniels told the jury in vivid detail about how she met Trump as a 27-year-old adult film actress during a golf tournament in Lake Tahoe. He was 60 at the time and at the height of his career as a reality TV star hosting the NBC hit The Apprentice.
She claims she agreed to meet Trump for what she thought would be a dinner, but when she got to his hotel, his security guard told her Trump would meet her in his suite, where he greeted her wearing satin pyjamas.
“I said, ‘Does Hugh Hefner know you stole his pyjamas?’” Daniels recalled saying, referring to the trademark outfits of Playboy boss Hugh Hefner.
Daniels, now 45, told the court that she found Trump to be “pompous” and “arrogant” that night, and when he dared her to spank him with a magazine, she obliged.
Asked by the prosecutor where she swatted him, she replied: “on the butt.”
At one point she went to the bathroom, and came out to find him on the bed in boxer shorts and a tee-shirt.
They went on to have “brief” sex, she told the jury, and at one point she felt like she had “blacked out” even though she had not been drinking, evidence that led Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanche to demand a mistrial on the basis that it went too far.
While much of Daniel’s salacious story has been made public before – in TV interviews, books and documentaries – this was the first time the details had been laid bare for the 12-member jury who hold Trump’s fate in their hands.
However, before she took the stand, Trump’s defence team asked Judge Juan Merchan to limit lurid details about the sexual encounter, including specifics about “genitalia”, arguing that it could be unduly prejudicial.
Merchan agreed with that request, and expressed frustration as prosecutors allowed Daniels’ to air salacious details that skirted close to the edge of his directive, such as whether Trump was wearing a condom or what sexual position they took.
In asking for a mistrial, Blanche argued that these details were added to embarrass the former president and “inflame” the jury.
Minutes before court adjourned for the lunch break, the prosecution finally moved on to the substance of the case, which is not about whether the pair had an affair but rather, whether Trump fraudulently paid hush money to stop his campaign for office being derailed.
Daniels was paid $US130,000 by Trump’s lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen to silence her story on the eve of the 2016 election. Trump then reimbursed Cohen, but is alleged to have falsified business records in order to disguise the payment as a legal retainer.
On his way into the courtroom, Trump once again railed against the trial, claiming without evidence that it had been orchestrated by Joe Biden. AP
