NEW YORK (AP) — Stormy Daniels concluded her testimony in Donald Trump's hush money trial Thursday after spending roughly 7 1/2 hours on the stand over two days. The porn actor recounted, among other things, the alleged 2006 sexual encounter with the former president that she was eventually paid to keep quiet about during the 2016 presidential election.
The former president's attorneys aggressively sought to poke holes in Daniels' credibility during cross-examination accusing her of trying to extort Trump, rehearsing her testimony and changing her story over the years — all things she forcefully denied.
The often heated exchanges had jurors and others in the courtroom swiveling their heads between the lawyers' lectern and the witness stand, riveted by the back-and-forth.
Trump denies the two ever had sex.
A Trump Organization bookkeeper who was formerly an assistant to former chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg followed Daniels on the witness stand.
Also on Thursday, defense attorneys asked New York’s mid-level appeals court on Wednesday to expedite a decision on Trump's gag order appeal.
The court did not take immediate action but set deadlines for court filings in the next two weeks.
Prosecutors say Trump and two of his associates orchestrated a scheme to influence the 2016 election by purchasing and then burying stories that might damage his campaign.
Daniels' testimony is a build-up to the prosecution's star witness Michael Cohen, who arranged the $130,000 payment to Daniels and later went to prison for orchestrating the payments and other charges.
Trump is accused of falsifying internal business records to cover up the hush money payments and instead recording them as legal expenses. He has pleaded not guilty.
The case is the first-ever criminal trial of a former U.S. president and the first of four prosecutions of Trump to reach a jury.
Currently:
— Here is what Stormy Daniels testified happened between her and Donald Trump
— Inside the courtroom where Trump was forced to listen to Stormy Daniels
— Hush money, catch and kill and more: Terms to know in Trump trial
— Key players: Who’s who at Donald Trump’s hush money criminal trial
— The hush money case is just one of Trump’s legal cases. See the others here
Here's the latest:
Testimony in Donald Trump's hush money case has concluded for the day.
Madeleine Westerhout’s testimony will continue on Friday. The judge is now sending the jury home so that he can attend to several issues the defense plans to raise, including renewing its motion for a mistrial following Stormy Daniels’ testimony.
Madeleine Westerhout wiped tears from her eyes and asked for a moment as prosecutors turned to her exit from the White House during her testimony on Thursday.
She said she was fired after divulging private details about the job during a dinner with reporters that she believed was “off the record.”
“I am very regretful of my youthful indiscretion,” she said. Donald Trump at the time said she was dismissed for saying things about his children.
As she spoke in court, Trump shook his head twice from the defense table.
Westerhout went on to publish a book, “Off the Record,” about her time in the White House, in order to “to share with the American people the man that I got to know,” she testified. “I don’t think he’s treated fairly and I wanted to tell that story” she added.
Earlier Thursday, Trump Organization executive assistant Rebecca Manochio testified about her practice of sending batches of unsigned checks to the White House via FedEx for Donald Trump to sign from his personal account.
Westerhout provided the White House perspective on that arrangement, recounting how Trump would receive packages about twice a month — some containing one check and others with a stack about a half-inch thick. The checks were often attached to invoices stating what the payment was for.
After signing the checks, Westerhout said Trump would give them back to her and she’d sent them back to the Trump Organization using a prelabeled FedEx envelope.
At times, Westerhout said Trump would sometimes pull aside a check and ask for more information before signing. In those instances, she said she remembered Trump calling the company's then-chief finance chief “Allen Weisselberg or someone else in the Trump Organization to ask for clarification.”
Manochio had testified earlier that, to her knowledge, Trump didn’t speak to Weisselberg once he became president.
Jurors in Donald Trump's hush money trial got a look at a redacted contact list that Trump’s assistant at his company sent to Madeleine Westerhout, representing people he spoke to frequently or might want to.
It’s a who’s who of big names, including former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, tennis player Serena Williams, casino mogul Steve Wynn, football legends Tom Brady and Bill Belichick, and “The Apprentice” producer Mark Burnett.
Their contact details are redacted.
Closer to home, the list included the names of some of Trump’s family members, as well as trial figures David Pecker, Michael Cohen and Allen Weisselberg.
Another name on the list, Fox News’ Jeanine Pirro, was in attendance at the trial earlier Thursday, watching Stormy Daniels’ testimony from an overflow room down the hall.
When Donald Trump was president, the only person authorized to post to his personal Twitter account — @realDonaldTrump — was then-Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino, according to Madeleine Westerhout in testimony Thursday.
Westerhout said she was unaware of Scavino posting any tweets without Trump’s knowledge, testifying: “It’s my recollection that the president did like to see the tweets that went out.”
Workshopping Trump’s tweets sometimes involved Scavino dictating a draft to Westerhout, which she said she would then type up and print out for Trump, who would then make edits. The marked-up version would then be sent back to Scavino, and so on.
“My recollection was that there were certain words that he liked to capitalize. Words like country, and he liked to use exclamation points … It’s my understanding that he liked to use the Oxford comma.”
Trump used Twitter as a primary form of communication throughout his White House years. He used the platform to push policies, announce major developments and attack foes. He was suspended from Twitter, now known as the social platform X, after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riots and has since used his Truth Social platform as his primary social media vehicle.
Prosecutors in Donald Trump's hush money trial called Madeleine Westerhout — Trump's personal secretary from 2017 to 2019 and the former director of Oval Office Operations for the Trump White House from February to August 2019 — to the stand Thursday afternoon.
Before going to the White House, Westerhout worked for the Republican National Committee. She was there when Trump’s infamous “Access Hollywood” tape was made public weeks before the 2016 election.
She recalled, in testimony, the tape “rattling RNC leadership” and that “there were conversations about how it would be possible to replace him as the candidate if it came to that.”
After Trump won the 2016 election, Westerhout and others from the RNC began working frequently in Trump Tower to aid the transition. And late that year, she said, her boss asked whether she had any interest in working right outside the Oval Office.
“I said, ‘Yes, I would. That sounds like a really cool job,’” she recalled with a smile.
Tracey Menzie, a senior vice president of with HarperCollins Publishers, was briefly called to the witness stand in Donald Trump's hush money trial Thursday afternoon. HarperCollins published “Think Big: Make It Happen in Business and Life,” a 2007 book by Trump and entrepreneur Bill Zanker.
Prosecutor Becky Mangold began questioning by having Menzie read some sections of the book specifically attributed to Trump.
Those passages discuss how he values “loyalty above everything else,” punished a “disloyal” person by going “out of my way to make her life miserable” and espoused as a motto: “Always get even. When somebody screws you, screw them back in spades.”
Following roughly four minutes of cross-examination after a lunch break Thursday afternoon, Rebecca Manochio finished giving testimony in Donald Trump's hush money trial.
Manochio, a junior bookkeeper at the Trump Organization at the time Donald Trump was president, was responsible for sending unsigned checks for him to sign at the White House for his personal expenses.
Manochio confirmed previous testimony that Trump was the only person authorized to sign checks for his personal account and that he was not involved in signing any checks for his business because those assets had been put into a revocable trust while he was president. His son Donald Trump Jr. and Allen Weisselberg, then-Trump Organization chief financial officer, had authority to sign checks for the business.
Manochio testified that Trump and Weisselberg would speak at least once a day before Trump embarked on his run for president. After Trump started campaigning and was out of the office more often, the frequency of their contacts decreased, Manochio said. And, to her knowledge, she testified, Trump and Weisselberg didn’t speak at all after Trump became president.
Before breaking for lunch, Trump lawyer Todd Blanche told Judge Juan M. Merchan that the defense plans to renew its call for a mistrial in the hush money case based on Stormy Daniels’ testimony.
Blanche also said they will seek to prevent former Playboy model Karen McDougal from testifying and that they will make further arguments about the gag order that bars Donald Trump from speaking publicly about jurors, witnesses and others connected to the case.
Merchan said he would send the jury home at 4 p.m. and subsequently take up the defense’s arguments.
Rebecca Manochio, a Trump Organization bookkeeper who was formerly an assistant to then finance chief Allen Weisselberg, has taken the stand in Donald Trump's hush money trial.
She is expected to testify about the nuts and bolts of check-paying procedures within the company.
Stormy Daniels concluded her testimony in Donald Trump's hush money trial midday Thursday following the conclusion of cross-examination by the defense and a brief round of redirect questioning from prosecutors.
She has completed her testimony, given over two days in Trump’s criminal trial.
As Daniels walked off the stand and out of the courtroom, Trump turned his gaze away from her, appearing to look at a screen in front of him.
Stormy Daniels testified Thursday that she never spoke with Donald Trump about the $130,000 hush money payment she received from Micahel Cohen and had no knowledge of whether Trump was aware of or involved in the transaction.
“You have no personal knowledge about his involvement in that transaction or what he did or didn’t do,” Trump lawyer Susan Necheles asked.
“Not directly, no,” Daniels responded.
Upon further questioning, Daniels noted that she didn’t negotiate directly with Cohen, either, but that her lawyer at the time, Keith Davidson did.
Necheles used the questions in the final moments of her cross-examination to underscore that Daniels does not know of any of the allegations underlying Trump’s charges in the case, that he falsified his company’s records to hide the true nature of reimbursement payments to Cohen.
Necheles asked Daniels if she was aware of what Trump had been indicted for, producing an uncomfortable answer that the lawyer wanted stricken from the record. Her answer: “There’s a lot of indictments.”
Daniels went on to say that she knew the charges involved business records, but when asked if she knew anything about Trump’s business records, she acknowledged: “I know nothing about his business records. No. Why would I?”
Amid the tension between Stormy Daniels and defense lawyer Susan Necheles during cross-examination in Donald Trump's hush money trial, the courtroom itself was relatively calm.
There were no audible reactions from the gallery — mostly reporters with one row of public observers — when testimony grew particularly tense Thursday morning. If anything, the drama unfolded somewhat like a Broadway show with Necheles and Daniels playing off each other.
Many jurors viewed the back and forth the way they might watch a tennis match: swiveling their heads between the lawyers’ lectern and the witness box with each question and answer. Some jurors scribbled notes, others leaned back in their chairs.
Trump watched intently.
The rest of the audience watched wide-eyed but respectful of the court’s decorum.
Before a morning break in Donald Trump's hush money trial, Stormy Daniels pushed back on suggestions by the defense that her story about their alleged sexual encounter has changed over time.
Daniels testified earlier this week that while she wasn’t physically menaced, she felt a “power imbalance” as Trump, in his hotel bedroom, stood between her and the door and propositioned her.
As for whether she felt compelled to have sex with him, she reiterated Thursday that he didn’t drug her or physically threaten her.
But, she said, “My own insecurities, in that moment, kept me from saying no.”
Trump denies any sexual encounter happened.
Several times, defense lawyer Susan Necheles accused Daniels of altering the details of her story over time, saying at one point: “Your story has completely changed.”
Daniels insisted it has not. “You’re trying to make me say that it changed, but it hasn’t changed at all.”
Donald Trump’s defense attorney zeroed in on Stormy Daniels’ career in adult films to suggest that her story about being shocked and frightened by Trump’s alleged sexual advances is not believable.
“You’ve acted and had sex in over 200 porn movies, right?” asked Necheles. “And there are naked men and women having sex, including yourself, in those movies?”
Necheles continued: “But according to you, seeing a man sitting on a bed in a T-shirt and boxers was so upsetting that you got lightheaded, the blood left your hands and feet and you felt like you were going to faint.”
Daniels replied that the experience with Trump was different from porn for several reasons — including the fact that Trump was more than twice her age, larger than her and that she was not expecting to find him undressed when she emerged from the bathroom.
“I came out of a bathroom seeing an older man that I wasn’t expecting to be there,” she said.
Defense lawyer Susan Necheles tried to show during cross-examination on Thursday that details from Stormy Daniels’ story of meeting Donald Trump in 2006 have changed over time, pointing to a 2011 interview in which she said the two talked “before, during and after” dinner in his hotel room, though she testified earlier this week that they never got any food.
Daniels rebuffed the idea that there was a discrepancy: saying that what she meant was that they talked during dinnertime but that she never said they actually got food, to her frustration, as she’s “very food-motivated.”
“I’ve maintained that in every interview — that we never actually ate,” she said during an extended exchange on the dinner details, and explained: “Having dinner, at least from where I’m from, doesn’t necessarily mean you have to put food in your mouth. You’re going to someone’s house for dinner, it’s dinnertime.”
“The details of your story keep changing, right?” Necheles asked at one point.
“No,” Daniels said.
In one of the hush money trial’s odder moments, Stormy Daniels was pressed about her experience dealing with a ghost — which may have just been a marsupial.
Asked by Trump lawyer Susan Necheles about her claim that she lived in a New Orleans home that was “haunted and the spirits attacked you,” Daniels launched into an explanation of her possible encounter.
“The house had some very unexplained activity. We brought in experts, people to measure the electromagnetic fields, religious experts, scientists,” she said. “A lot of the activity was completely debunked as a giant possum that was under the house.”
The line of questioning appeared aimed at undermining Daniels’ credibility while giving Necheles a chance to highlight that Daniels is working on a paranormal investigation show called Spooky Babes.
Necheles then turned pointedly to Daniels' career, asking: “You have a lot of experience in making phony stories about sex appear real?”
“The sex in those films is real, just like the sex in that room,” Daniels replied. “The character themes might be different, but the sex is very real. That’s why it’s pornography, not a B movie.”
Regarding her account of having a sexual encounter with Trump — a claim he denies — Daniels said: “If that story was not true I would’ve written it to be a lot better.”
“Because you’re a good story writer, right?” Necheles responded.
Defense lawyer Susan Necheles pressed Stormy Daniels on her social media marketing of merchandise tied to her public persona as a Trump antagonist.
Asked about an “in celebration of new indictments” promotion from last year that offered a gift for new orders, Necheles asked whether the performer wasn’t using the circumstances to flog products.
“Not unlike Mr. Trump,” Daniels calmly retorted.
Necheles then suggested Daniels was “bragging” by offering a “Stormy Saint of Indictments” candle.
“No, I’m not bragging. I think it’s funny that a store made that for me to sell,” Daniels said.
And no, she corrected Necheles, she’s not making $40 per candle, but rather about $7.
Several times on Thursday, Stormy Daniels has taken issue with Trump lawyer Susan Necheles’ questioning.
Amid questions about the financial arrangements for her documentary, Daniels accused Necheles of “trying to trick me into saying something that’s not entirely true.”
At another point, Daniels demanded the defense lawyer back up her claim about something she claimed Daniels had said regarding Donald Trump’s arrest.
“Show me where I said I’d be instrumental in putting President Trump in jail,” the witness said, steady and unflustered.
After Necheles showed Daniels a social media post she’d made that did not reflect those precise words, Daniels replied: “I don’t see the ‘instrumental’ or ‘jail.’ You’re putting words in my mouth.”
Trump spent much of the first hour of testimony leaning back in his seat and staring straight ahead, nodding at times as his attorney called jurors’ attention to social media posts by Daniels insulting him.
It was a far cry from the visible repulsion he displayed during her initial testimony to prosecutors.
During cross-examination Thursday morning, porn actor Stormy Daniels underscored several times that she received no compensation for a “60 Minutes” interview she gave in 2018, relaying her alleged sexual encounter with Donald Trump. But Susan Necheles, the defense lawyer, contended that the publicity from the TV appearance led to other moneymaking opportunities, including a book deal and a strip club tour.
Daniels said she’s received $100,000 and is due another $25,000 for footage and other rights she provided to the makers of a documentary about her experiences that aired recently on the NBC streaming service Peacock.
Some of the money was used to compensate camera operators who had filmed her before the documentary’s producers got involved, she said.
Daniels said she was not paid for any interviews she gave for the documentary.
Trump attorney Susan Necheles ran through the finer points of the nondisclosure agreement that Stormy Daniels had with Michael Cohen, asking Daniels to confirm that she agreed to highlighted portions.
Daniels responds in terse one-word answers, “Yes,” adding: “I signed this only based on what my attorneys suggested.”
Necheles confronted Daniels with two statements she signed in early 2018 denying that she ever had any sexual involvement with Trump or received money to keep quiet. She said her then-lawyer, Keith Davidson, advised her to sign it, and that she was told that Cohen was pressing him to get her to do so.
Necheles noted that by then, Trump wasn’t running for election — an apparent effort to buttress the defense’s argument that Trump’s desire to squelch what he says are false claims about his personal life wasn’t related to his political ambitions, but rather to protect his family and reputation.
“I wouldn’t know what he wanted to protect,” Daniels said.
Stormy Daniels conceded Thursday that she was angry when Michael Cohen was slow to pay her the $130,000 he’d promised in exchange for her silence about a sexual encounter with Donald Trump, but she denied ever yelling at her then-lawyer Keith Davidson demanding to be paid.
“You were furious, weren’t you?” Trump lawyer Susan Necheles asked during cross-examination.
“Yes,” Daniels testified.
Necheles then played an audio recording of a phone call in which Davidson told Cohen that if he didn’t pay up, the boyfriend of Daniels’ manager might go public claiming he’d heard her on the phone screaming at Davidson to settle the case.
Davidson, relaying what the boyfriend might say about Daniels, was heard saying: “If (Trump) loses this election, we all lose all (expletive) leverage. This case is worth zero.”
Daniels denied that the third-hand imagined account of what her manager’s boyfriend might say bore any resemblance to how she actually interacted with her lawyer at the time.
“I’ve never yelled at Keith Davidson on the phone,” Daniels testified, looking at a transcript of the recording. “This specifically says Gina’s boyfriend was going to go out and tell a story.”
Defense attorney Susan Necheles resumed cross-examination of Stormy Daniels on Thursday by pressing her on why she decided to take money to keep silent about her alleged sexual encounter with Donald Trump instead of holding a press conference, as Daniels has said she wanted to do.
“Why didn’t you do that?” Necheles asked.
“Because we were running out of time,” Daniels said. Did she mean, Necheles asked, that she was running out of time to use the claim to make money? “To get the story out,” Daniels countered. The negotiations were happening in the final weeks of the 2016 presidential campaign.
As Daniels was negotiating her non-disclosure agreement with Michael Cohen, she testified, she was also speaking with other journalists, including an editor at Slate as a “backup” plan.
While Daniels said she was most interested in getting her story out and ensuring her family’s safety, Necheles accused her of refusing to share the story with reporters because she wouldn’t be paid for it.
“The better alternative was for you to get money, right?” Necheles said.
“The better alternative was to get my story protected with a paper trail so that my family didn’t get hurt,” Daniels replied.
Donald Trump's lawyers asked New York's mid-level appeals court on Wednesday to expedite a decision on his gag order appeal.
The court did not take immediate action but set deadlines for court filings in the next two weeks. If the court refuses to lift the gag order in Trump's hush money case, his lawyers want permission to take their appeal to the state’s high court, called the Court of Appeals.
The gag order bars the former president from speaking publicly about jurors, witnesses and some others in his criminal trial.
Over the first few weeks of Donald Trump's hush money trial, the scene outside the courthouse has largely settled into a routine — a few dozen members of the public, a typically small group of demonstrators and the journalists covering the day-to-day developments.
But the arrival of Stormy Daniels seems to have shifted that equilibrium.
With Daniels set to re-take the stand on Thursday, a far larger share of the public has amassed outside 100 Centre Street, alongside new ranks of media from the U.S. and abroad. A few minutes before 8 a.m., as lines swelled to their longest since the start of the trial, court officers said they had no choice but to turn people away.
Among the members of the public in line was Rose Brennan, a 63-year-old woman wearing a hand puppet meant to resemble Donald Trump. “He has accompanied me on many adventures,” she said of the puppet. “Even though I hoped he would have been retired by now.”
She said she and the puppet traveled from New Jersey, arriving outside the courthouse at 5:30 a.m. because “I just want to be a witness to history.”
Donald Trump is facing four criminal indictments and a civil lawsuit. You can track all of the cases here.
A Georgia appeals court on Wednesday agreed to review a lower court ruling allowing Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to continue to prosecute the election interference case she brought against the former president.
On Tuesday, the federal judge in Florida presiding over the classified documents prosecution of Trump has canceled the May 20 trial date, postponing it indefinitely.
As former President Donald Trump remains stuck in the courtroom listening to salacious details of an extramarital sexual encounter he denies, another spectacle is playing out in the background as his vice presidential tryouts get underway.
The dynamic was on full display in Florida at a fundraiser at his Mar-a-Lago club that doubled as a VP audition.
“This weekend, we had 15 people. ... They’re all out there campaigning,” Trump told Spectrum News 1 Wisconsin on Tuesday. “It might actually be more effective this way because, you know, every one of them thinks they could be chosen, which I guess possibly is so.”
For now, the presumptive GOP nominee is happy to revel in the attention as reporters parse his choices and prospective candidates jockey and woo him in an “Apprentice”-style competition.
Senator Rick Scott, R-Fla., speaks outside Manhattan criminal court, Thursday, May 9, 2024, in New York. Scott attended former President Donald Trump's criminal trial Thursday. (AP Photo/Joseph Frederick)
Former President Donald Trump, followed by his lawyer Susan Necheles, right, and advisor Boris Epshteyn, second from left, gestures as he returns to the courtroom following a break in his trial at Manhattan Criminal Court in New York, Thursday, May 9, 2024. (Victor J. Blue/The Washington Post via AP, Pool)
Stormy Daniels testifies on the witness stand as a promotional image for one of her shows featuring an image of Trump is displayed on monitors in Manhattan criminal court, Thursday, May 9, 2024, in New York. (Elizabeth Williams via AP)
Former President Donald Trump speaks to reporters next to lawyer Todd Blanche at Manhattan Criminal Court in New York, Thursday, May 9, 2024. (Angela Weiss/Pool Photo via AP)
Former President Donald Trump speaks to reporters at Manhattan Criminal Court in New York, Thursday, May 9, 2024. (Angela Weiss/Pool Photo via AP)
FILE - Stormy Daniels arrives at an event in Berlin, on Oct. 11, 2018. Witness testimony in Donald Trump's hush money trial is set to move forward again and all eyes are on who will be called next. An attorney for Stormy Daniels says the porn actor is expected to appear as a witness on Tuesday. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, File)
Stormy Daniels, second from left, exits the courthouse in New York, Tuesday, May 7, 2024. Porn actor Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, took the stand mid-morning Tuesday and testified about her alleged sexual encounter with Trump in 2006, among other things. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Former President Donald Trump, followed by his attorney Todd Blanche, walks to speak to reporters following the day's proceedings in his trial, Tuesday, May 7, 2024, in New York. (Win McNamee/Pool Photo via AP)
Former President Donald Trump talks reporters following the day's proceedings in his trial, Tuesday, May 7, 2024, in New York. (Win McNamee/Pool Photo via AP)
