Donald Trump whispered to his lawyers as Stormy Daniels walked to the witness stand in a Manhattan courtroom Tuesday morning. The porn star was dressed in all black. She moved her glasses from atop her head onto her face. She turned toward the jury and started to explain how it came to be that she was at the center of the scandal leading to the first-ever criminal trial of a US president.
Daniels and Trump met at a celebrity golf tournament in 2006. She has claimed that they had sex shortly after meeting—and then never again, though they kept in touch for a time. Ten years later, this account figured prominently and improbably into the lead-up to the 2016 election, when Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen paid Daniels for her silence. The story eventually came out anyway, once Trump had already won, and Daniels became one of the defining figures of the early Trump White House. He called her “horseface”; she acquired global fame. Nearly 20 years since the alleged sexual encounter that Trump denies having had, he is standing trial for falsifying business records in order to conceal the hush money payment to Daniels. (Trump has pleaded not guilty.)
Daniels was testifying under subpoena but seemed relatively at ease, expansive if a bit rushed. Justice Juan Merchan asked her a few times to slow down for the sake of the court stenographer. She rehashed the biographical details that have found their way into several years’ worth of magazines, books, and most recently, a documentary. She said she was born and raised in Baton Rouge and, with a laugh, discussed how she switched from shoveling manure to dancing at a strip club for the pay increase. She recounted how she started modeling nude at 21 and starring in and writing adult films at 23. Twice, she elaborated on a detail of her work and noted that she was providing it “for those who don’t know.”
Within 15 minutes of her testimony beginning, Daniels had guided the jury to the hotel suite in Lake Tahoe where she has said she and Trump had sex. “Does Mr. Hefner know you stole his pajamas?” she recalled asking Trump after seeing his silk sleepwear. He peppered her with questions, she said, about her job—about unions, residuals, and STD testing—which she thought was “very cool.” But he kept cutting her off, and she asked him, “Are you always this rude?”
Daniels said she had come to the suite for dinner and didn’t realize that Trump intended to sleep with her. It concerned her that he didn’t wear a condom, she testified, but she didn’t mention it, because “I didn’t say anything at all.” She testified that it was dark out by the time she left the suite, and her hands were shaking as she tried to put her gold, strappy heels on. Daniels has always said the sex was consensual but awkward and, for her part, reluctant. When she was asked on the stand why she didn’t say no to Trump, she repeated, “I didn’t say anything at all.”
At the defense table, Trump stared straight ahead.
The trial, in these first few weeks, has flitted between the dry details of financial records and the intrigue surrounding a historic sex scandal. Before Daniels testified, with the pendulum set to swing back toward her side of the matter, Trump’s attorney Susan Necheles argued to the judge that “this case is a case about books and records” and sought to limit the details of the alleged tryst that would be admissible.
Merchan seemed to understand. “We don’t need to know the details of the intercourse,” he said. After Daniels began testifying, he seemed frustrated when she went beyond the confines of the questions asked of her, reminding her a few times not to elaborate unprompted. The condom detail, for instance, was one that led Trump’s lawyers to call for a mistrial, a request that Merchan did not grant.
Throughout Daniels’s testimony, Trump continued to whisper to Necheles. She is the only woman among the lawyers who accompany him at the defense table each day. She is expected to cross-examine Daniels as her testimony continues this week.