The atmosphere inside room 1530 was already electric. A brooding Donald Trump glared at the ranks of the press as if he wanted to gauge the size of his audience before prosecutors and defense lawyers haggled over how much of the mechanics of their alleged affair could be brought before the jury.
Only no one had counted on how porn star Stormy Daniels would become a fugitive witness as she described their 2006 hotel encounter.
“I had taken off my clothes and shoes. However, I think my bra was still on. We were in the missionary position,” Daniels said.
Trump, 77, was already making gestures in his defense. “Objection,” said Susan Necheles, raising her umpteenth objection of the morning.
By then, Daniels, 45, had told us about her career as an erotic dancer, her first porn film (“I’ll spare you the details,” she said), and her STD testing regimen (once a month at the time she He said he now meets with Trump twice a month.)
At one point, Stormy Daniels showed off a small calf and leaned back, hand behind her head, as she demonstrated how she said Donald Trump reclined on a hotel bed in 2006.
Trump did not look directly at Daniels, with whom he denies having an affair, but instead watched her testimony on the video screen in front of him, frowning.
The jury had heard her talk about pornographic sessions where condom use was mandatory, a description of herself as having “blond hair and big breasts” and how she whipped Trump with a rolled-up magazine.
But it was two moments — when she described not being able to remember how she ended up in a hotel bed with Trump and how he allegedly didn’t use a conviction — that briefly threatened to derail the entire hush money case.
Either way, Daniels was determined to tell the story of how she met Trump at a celebrity golf event in 2006, before having sex with him, and then selling the rights to her story just before the 2016 election.
And tell her that she did it… using all her acting skills to express it with hand waves, pouting lips and wrinkles on her nose, interspersed with laughter as if to underline the absurdity of it all.
The jury listened raptly to the flood of words. After a day of boring but essential testimony about bills and checks on Monday, Daniels was the spectacular star.
Some of the jurors looked down as they took notes. Others seemed hypnotized.
His arrival at the courtroom on Tuesday morning was followed by all eyes. Even Trump looked on sullenly when she arrived wrapped in a long black hooded blouse that extended to beneath her skirt, glasses perched atop her black-streaked blonde hair, like the goth librarian of a teenager’s dreams. .
It was one of the few times Trump was able to see her. His view of her was obscured by the judge’s stand, forcing him to watch her testimony on the monitor on his desk.
Daniels also avoided looking at him. He had to lean forward and turn in his seat to point it out when prosecutor Susan Hoffinger asked him.
The jury was shown the well-known photograph of Trump and Daniels, taken at a celebrity golf event in Lake Tahoe. She described their brief meeting and how he invited her to dinner afterwards.
Stormy Daniels with Donald Trump in 2006, at the time of the alleged affair
The witness stand could barely contain her as she reenacted her meeting with Trump at a Tahoe hotel.
He was wearing satin pajamas in his suite when they met, before she ordered him to change into something less comfortable.
They started with what passes for small talk between a porn star and a billionaire. After talking about union representation in the adult film business, wrestling and STD testing, she said she headed to the master bedroom suite to use the bathroom.
She couldn’t help but dig through her toiletry bag (think Old Spice and a gold manicure kit), before returning to the bedroom. There, Trump was lying on the bed wearing only a T-shirt and boxers.
“Like this,” she said, lifting her right leg to show her calf and stretching her left arm behind her head in a seductress’s pose.
At first he was startled, “as if he were afraid to jump.” The next thing she knew she was in bed.
“Was it brief?” prosecutor Susan Hoffinger asked.
‘Yes,’ was the answer.
Trump did not use a condom, he said, in a comment that the defense would try to use against him.
Trump looked ahead, frowning.
Daniels left Manhattan Criminal Court on Tuesday night. she will return on thursday
Trump’s lawyers asked for a mistrial Tuesday after Daniels’ extraordinary testimony
Hoffinger tried to ask more about his memory and how much he remembered about ending up in bed.
But Trump was having none of that. He hit the arm of his defense attorney, requesting a barrage of objections that Judge Juan Merchán accepted, asking that several responses be erased from the file.
It was a reminder of how Daniels’ story has changed over time, from a consensual encounter to one that now hinted at a more sinister side.
That topic came up again later, when Daniels was asked why he kept it private.
“I felt ashamed that I didn’t stop it,” she said. “I didn’t say no.”
Throughout, Daniels gave long answers to short questions. He explained his state of mind and added a number of additional details, much to the judge’s frustration.
“Mrs. Daniels, please keep your answers brief,” he reminded her.
On other occasions he would simply ask him to answer the questions they asked him. And the court reporter, the prosecutor, and the judge had to remind him to slow down as his words came in a kind of rapid torrent that even a stenographer with a shorthand typewriter struggles to keep up with.
The result was an avalanche of information that at times threatened to introduce new accusations of crimes.
Daniels is at the center of claims that Trump paid hush money to prevent negative stories from emerging before the 2016 election. He denies 34 counts of falsifying business documents
Like when Daniels described wanting to meet with Trump at a public club instead of in his private office. “Many witnesses,” she said, prompting Necheles to raise his objection with a tired “Your Honor of him.”
And then came the time when a stranger approached her in a Las Vegas parking lot in 2011 and told her not to sell her story. It was an indication of a plot that Trump’s allies wanted to silence her.
The defense saw its moment after lunch, asking the judge to throw out the trial on the grounds that his testimony had raised all sorts of additional questions in the jurors’ minds.
“This is the kind of testimony that is impossible to go back from,” said defense attorney Todd Blanche. “How can we get out of this in a way that is fair to President Trump?”
There was no need for her to mention that Trump didn’t use a condom, she said, except to “inflame” the jury.
Merchan ruled that the trial was not a mistrial. But the defense was right, he added.
“There were several things that would have been better left unsaid,” he said in his discreet tone.
In fact, he added that he had raised his own objection when the defense did not intervene.
‘To be fair to him [prosecution]”I think the witness was a little difficult to control,” he said.
That might be the only thing he and Trump, who has been a disgruntled defender since day one, will ever agree on.