Trump New York Trial: Judge Rebukes Prosecutors, Stormy Daniels Recalls 2006 Encounter

The judge presiding over the New York hush money trial against Donald Trump on Tuesday scolded prosecutors after porn star Stormy Daniels recounted graphic details about her alleged sexual encounter with the former president 18 years ago.

After a brief morning break, Judge Juan Merchan addressed the attorneys before bringing back the 12-member jury. Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, testified from the witness stand about graphic details surrounding her alleged sexual encounter with Trump in 2006 just after Merchan warned that such details would be “unnecessary” for the jury to hear as they weigh charges of records falsification.

“I think the degree of detail we’ve been going into here is just unnecessary,” Merchan told prosecutors, minutes before Daniels described how the alleged sexual encounter with Trump began. Trump lawyer Susan Necheles previously said the defense team objects to Daniels testifying about intimate details involving her alleged sexual encounter with Trump, and Merchan sustained several of her objections when Daniels’s testimony became too explicit at times.

Prosecutors have sought to tie allegations of various alleged sex scandals that they say Trump attempted to conceal, with the help of his former attorney and fixer Michael Cohen and ranking executives at the National Enquirer, with business records that were later allegedly falsified. Cohen paid $130,000 to porn star Stormy Daniels in the final days of the 2016 election to keep her silent about her allegations of an affair with Trump in 2006, which Trump denies ever happened.

Before the morning break, Daniels recounted her first experience meeting Trump during a celebrity golf tournament in 2006 near Lake Tahoe in Nevada. She said her first interaction with Trump was “very brief” and remembered he told her she must be “smart” after he learned she also directed films.

After the break, Daniels returned to the witness stand and testified about how she ultimately agreed to have dinner with Trump after some initial hesitation, and she said that his bodyguard sent instructions to take a specific elevator up to a hotel penthouse floor, which ultimately led her to Trump’s hotel room.

Daniels testified that Trump’s hotel suite was three times the size of her apartment, adding when he walked into the foyer, she claimed Trump met her in silk pajamas.

“I told him to go change, so he obliged, very politely,” Daniels said. She then alleged that she sat down at the dining room table where Trump asked several “get to know you” questions, including whether she had been tested for sexually transmitted infections. Daniels responded she was always negative.

After dinner, Daniels went into a bathroom in the room, and when she reemerged she claimed she found Trump on the hotel room bed wearing boxer shorts and a t-shirt. She recalled on Tuesday in court thinking at that point, “Oh my God. What did I misread to get here?” She added that the “intention was pretty clear” when someone “stripped down to underwear, posing on the bed and waiting for you.”

When asked by prosecutors whether the sexual encounter with Trump was brief, she said it was. She also claimed that Trump did not wear a condom but that she did not say anything about it to him, and alleged they were at one point in a missionary position.

Merchan had admonished prosecutors for eliciting sexually explicit testimony from Daniels even before that exchange, and he sustained objections from defense attorneys when the topic of sexual positions and condoms arose.

The porn star also claimed Trump did not tell her to keep quiet about the alleged encounter and that he suggested they get together again. The following day, she claimed she met Trump again while in public at a nightclub at her hotel.

Daniels claimed she was introduced by Trump to some people as his “little friend Stormy,” and described the club as “dark” with “loud music.” She also alleged Trump would call her at least once a week for a time after meeting him, and that Trump called her “honeybunch.”

Reporters who were in the room said that Trump could be seen paying close attention to Daniels’s testimony, and at one point mouthed “bull****” in response to her claims from the stand.

Daniels has publicly recounted the details over the alleged affair on numerous occasions but her retelling of the story is under oath this time, in the historic first criminal trial against a former president.

She first described her interactions with Trump in a 2011 magazine interview with Life & Style, and although the magazine agreed to pay her $15,00 for her story, she never received the money because Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen, who is expected to be one of the prosecution’s star witnesses, had the story killed before publication.

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Trump’s attorneys could see Daniels’s graphic divulgence as an opening to seek a mistrial, though it’s not immediately clear if they would seek to file for one at this point in the trial. But calling for a mistrial might also negatively affect Trump, who would be forced to stay in the courtroom longer and remain off the campaign trail as the election approaches. The prosecutors have signaled they will be done presenting new witnesses by around May 22.

Defense attorneys may also cite the instance of Cohen seeking to silence the affair allegations in 2011 as a way to show Trump was interested in undermining Daniels’s allegations well before he launched his presidential campaign years later.