(CNN) — “The people call Stormy Daniels.”
It was the moment when Donald Trump’s hush money trial, mired in recent days in monotonous accounting testimony, came to life again on Tuesday.
A former president, who could find himself behind the Oval Office desk again in January, came face to face for the first time in years with the adult film star whom he is accused of silencing with a hush money payment.
What came next was sordid, blunt and painfully embarrassing for Trump, who was forced to sit scowling as Daniels described a detailed scene of a black-tiled hotel suite where a relationship the former president allegedly took place. keep denying.
It was the last unfathomable lurch of an electoral campaign like no other. And for a normal candidate who lacked Trump’s Teflon political skin, it would probably be the end of the road.
But as is often the case, a devastating legal blow to the former president was followed by a silver lining. Late Tuesday afternoon he learned that Judge Aileen Cannon, appointed by him, indefinitely postponed a trial in his classified documents case in Florida. This means Trump almost certainly will not face a jury on federal charges of mishandling classified information before the election, a reality that led his former White House adviser Ty Cobb to accuse Cannon of delaying the case. consent to frivolous motions and misinterpret applicable law. “This is a case of bias and incompetence,” Cobb told CNN’s Erin Burnett.
Cannon’s decision comes at a time when Trump’s two election interference cases, both overwhelmed by his pretrial delay tactics and withering appeals, are unlikely to reach trial before voters make their fateful election in November. The Georgia Court of Appeals said Wednesday it will consider an effort by Trump and his co-defendants to disqualify District Attorney Fani Willis from the 2020 election subversion case – another sign that pretrial efforts to delay a trial are having success.
So while the hush money case is widely considered the weakest of those facing Trump, it is likely the only one that could create the never-before-seen scenario of a convicted felon asking voters to elect him president.
That made Daniels’ testimony even more critical. And the biggest question after his first compelling three and three-quarter hours on the stand is whether his salacious testimony made a guilty verdict more likely, or ended up undermining the case.
Furthermore, could the bold nature of his depiction of his relationship with Trump break through in a way that previous unflattering revelations about the former president’s character have not and swing some critical swing-state votes in November?
Daniels reveals new details about her alleged relationship with Trump almost two decades ago
Daniels, along with former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, is one of two star witnesses in the first-ever criminal trial of a former US president. She spoke to jurors Tuesday about a $130,000 hush money payment. that he received from Cohen before the 2016 election. Those payments are not illegal. But prosecutors allege Trump falsified business records to conceal it and mislead voters in a first bout of election interference. He has pleaded not guilty.
“Stormy provided new information about her brief liaison with Donald Trump and additional information about many of the key elements of the case,” legal analyst Norm Eisen told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. “It was one of the most important days so far in this eventful trial.”
The drama was even greater than it initially seemed.
A transcript of the day’s proceedings revealed an exchange between Judge Juan Merchan and Trump’s lawyer that had not been audible in court. The magistrate complained that the former president was “audibly cursing” during Daniels’ testimony and shaking his head. “He has the potential to intimidate the witness and the jury can see that.” The judge told the lawyer, Todd Blanche, that he spoke with him in the dock to avoid embarrassing the defendant, but that the behavior had to stop. CNN’s Jeremy Herb, who was in court, reported that Trump was more interested Tuesday than at any previous point in the trial.
A day after Merchan warned him that he could go to jail if he continued to violate a gag order meant to protect jurors and witnesses, Trump was already on a tightrope with the judge. He managed to avoid crossing the line while speaking to reporters in a courtroom hallway at the end of the day. But Daniels’ open testimony may be the most arduous test of his unstable self-discipline and bring closer the possibility of a new confrontation with Merchan over the gag order.
It is impossible to know how jurors will interpret the different chapters of a trial.
But with the level of detail Daniels provided about her time with Trump, including her “silk or satin” pajamas, it seemed to seriously undermine her denials that they were in a relationship. That could be instrumental in explaining to jurors why Trump was so interested in allegedly covering it up.
But Trump’s lawyer, Susan Necheles, got Daniels to admit her dislike of Trump and that she wanted him to be held accountable. This admission could call into question her motives.
It only takes one juror to defeat a conviction. And in an aggressive cross-examination that will resume Thursday, Necheles sought to create reasonable doubt and disqualify Daniels as a credible witness. “Am I right that you hate President Trump?” Necheles asked. Daniels responded, “Yes.” Next, she asked the former adult film star if she wanted the former president to go to jail. “I want him to be held accountable,” she responded.
A day of surreal testimonies
As Trump tries to regain the White House in November, weighed down by four criminal indictments, an adverse ruling in a civil fraud trial valued at $500 million, the stigma of two impeachments and the memory of his assault on democracy after the 2020 election, the alleged facts of the case as aired Tuesday felt far short of the hammer blows of history.
For starters, it all happened a long time ago. The episode in question dates back to 2006, when Trump and Daniels were together in a hotel room at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe, when the future president was in the first throes of his success as a reality star.
Daniels stated that, upon returning from the bathroom, she was surprised to see Trump on the bed in a T-shirt and boxers. She testified that he took off his clothes and they had sex in the missionary position. “I was looking at the ceiling. I didn’t know how I got there,” Daniels said. “She was wearing gold strappy heels with tiny buckles. My hands were shaking so much. I had a hard time getting dressed. She said, ‘Oh, that was great. Let’s get together again, honey. We were so good together.’ I just wanted to leave.”
Neither Trump nor Daniels could have imagined nearly two decades ago the improbable path the two would take, until the moment when the alleged bedroom secrets of a former and possibly future president would transfigure a courtroom in the middle of the 2020s.
Although the extent of the alleged interactions between Trump and Daniels and subsequent attempts to cover them up are not necessarily important to how the case is decided, they could be more significant in public perception of the trial. This appeared to happen to Trump’s second son, Eric Trump, who was in court Tuesday and posted on X, testing a new line of attack from the Trump campaign. “Perspective: Sitting in the front row trying to figure out how some of this 20-year-old crap relates to ‘legal’ bills filed by a long-time personal attorney that are being recorded as a ‘legal’ expense,” he wrote.
As always, Donald Trump tried to put his own spin on events: “This was a very big day. A very revealing day, as you see, his case is totally falling apart,” Trump said after watching his lawyer try to dismantling Daniels’ story piece by piece. “They have nothing in books and records.” The former president is likely being overly optimistic on that point, since Daniels is primarily important to prosecutors in establishing the backstory of why the alleged cover-up occurred and she has no firsthand knowledge of the alleged cover-up. accounting transgressions.
Still, after Daniels’ lurid account, the former president’s team requested a mistrial, claiming that unnecessary details about the relationship could prejudice the jury against their client. Merchan denied the request, but did admit that some of the more explicit content “was better left unsaid.”
It’s a sentiment many Americans could agree with.
){kind=link}