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Stormy Daniels, the porn actor, gave a graphic account of Donald Trump’s alleged sexual advances towards her in a hotel room in 2006 during highly anticipated testimony at the former US president’s criminal “hush money” trial in Manhattan.
The details offered to the court by Daniels were so salacious that Trump’s lawyer called on the judge to order a mistrial, saying her account was “unduly and inappropriately prejudicial” — a request the judge denied.
The 45-year-old, who was paid $130,000 in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election to stay quiet about the alleged encounter, was sworn in on Tuesday morning, just steps away from the defence table where a visibly agitated Trump was sitting, flanked by his lawyers.
Daniels, often giggling nervously, recounted how she had been invited to Trump’s penthouse suite after meeting him at a golf tournament in Lake Tahoe. The two discussed the porn industry, and Trump, then a reality television star, offered to put her on the next season of The Apprentice, she told the jury.
She testified that she had swatted Trump on his behind with a rolled-up magazine, and that he had told her not to worry about his wife Melania, because they “don’t sleep in the same room”.
Daniels claimed that after going to the bathroom, she emerged to find Trump on a bed in his “boxer shorts and T-shirt”.
When she shied away from having sex with the real estate mogul, he told her: “I thought you were serious about what you wanted”, and insinuated that she should go through with it “to get out of that trailer park”. Those comments were heard by the jury but subsequently stricken from the record.
The two went on to have “brief” sex without using a condom, Daniels added.
The testimony, four weeks into the trial, heaped indignity on to the presumptive Republican nominee for president, who has already been forced off the campaign trail and into a cold courtroom for most of the week to listen to former associates and aides dredge up details of his past.
Trump, who was joined in court by his son Eric and close adviser Boris Epshteyn, whispered angrily to his counsel at several points during Daniels’ testimony, and often stared directly at the witness.
After a lunch recess, Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanche formally moved for a mistrial, arguing: “I don’t think anybody can listen to what that witness said and think it has anything to do with the charged conduct.”
Trump also took to social media to criticise the proceedings, posting on his Truth Social site: “THE PROSECUTION, WHICH HAS NO CASE, HAS GONE TOO FAR. MISTRIAL!”
The 77-year-old has been warned by the trial judge that he would be jailed if he continued to flout a court-imposed gag order by attacking witnesses and the jurors seated for the trial.
Justice Juan Merchan said he agreed with Blanche that there were “some things that [would] probably have been better left unsaid”, but concluded he did not believe a mistrial was warranted.
Trump is charged with falsifying the business records behind the payments to Daniels. He has always denied an affair with the actor, whom he has repeatedly disparaged on social media.
Daniels first denied any sexual relationship, but then broke a non-disclosure agreement she signed after receiving the $130,000 payments when she went public about the encounter while Trump was president.
Prosecutors have alleged that Trump directed his ex-fixer Michael Cohen to pay off Daniels because he was concerned the revelations would cost him the 2016 election — rather than just embarrass him — and the transactions therefore amount to an attempt to “corrupt” the democratic process.