Adult film actress Stormy Daniels took the witness stand at former President Donald Trump‘s New York criminal trial on Tuesday, testifying under oath about the sexual encounter she says she had with Trump in 2006 and the $130,000 deal for her silence that was struck during the closing days of the 2016 presidential campaign.
Daniels was the second witness called on Tuesday. She testified that she met Trump at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe in July 2006. Describing their first meeting as a “very brief encounter,” Daniels testified that she was 27 and remembered Trump being as old as her father — around 60.
The jury — which appeared focused intently on Daniels and her testimony — was then shown a picture of them together.
She said they later ran into each other at the club, and a man she later learned was Trump’s bodyguard told her Trump wanted to have dinner with her. She said she replied, “no, with an expletive in front.”
She did, however, get the bodyguard’s number, and said that later that day her publicist convinced her she should accept the invitation, telling her, “It’ll make a great story. He’s a business guy. What could possibly go wrong?”
She said she went up to Trump’s penthouse hotel suite and was told they’d be going to dinner at one of the restaurants downstairs. When she entered the room, which she described as “three times the size of my apartment,” he was wearing “silk or satin” pajamas. She said she quipped, “Does Hugh Hefner know you stole his pajamas?” and asked him to change, which he did.
They then sat at a dining table in the suite, where she said Trump asked her numerous questions about her adult film writing and directing. He then asked her about sexually transmitted diseases, and she said she’s tested constantly and “I’ve never had a bad test.”
She said she grew frustrated with him because he kept cutting off her answers, and when he pulled out a magazine with him on the cover, she said, “Someone should spank you with that.” She said she then rolled it up and “swatted” him with it. While jurors appeared poker-faced through her testimony, one began rubbing her face and appeared to be holding back laughter.
After that, she said Trump was “much more polite,” and suggested she should come on his TV show “The Apprentice.” “He said, ‘You remind me of my daughter,'” and appearing on the show would show she shouldn’t be underestimated.
In all, they chatted for about two hours, Daniels said. She said she went to the bathroom, and when she walked out, Trump was laying on the bed “in boxer shorts and t-shirt.” She said she was “startled, like a jump scare. Wasn’t expecting someone to be there, especially minus a lot of clothing.”
She said Trump told her, “I thought you were serious about what you wanted.” She said she felt “there was an imbalance of power for sure. He was bigger and blocking the way but I was not threatened either verbally or physically.” Asked if she ended up having sex with him on the bed, she said, “Yes.”
She described the sex as brief, and said Trump told her “it was great. Let’s get together again, honey bunch.” She said he had not used a condom, and hadn’t expressed any concern about his wife finding out what had happened. She said he also did not give her his phone number.
Trump’s bodyguard reached out to her the next day, to invite her to meet Trump at a bar in her hotel. When she got there, he was with then-Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger. Trump left about 10 minutes later, but continued to call her well after the encounter “with an update — or a non-update if he didn’t have one – for Apprentice.”
“He always called me honey bunch,” she said.
She said they saw each other again in Jan. 2007, when he invited her to the launch of his Trump vodka brand. While there, she said he introduced her to his friend “Karen,” who she later learned was Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model who said she was having a months-long affair with Trump during that period. Former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker testified earlier in the trial that he paid her $150,000 to keep her quiet about that claim during the 2016 election. Trump has denied both Daniels’ and McDougal’s claims.
Daniels said Trump also invited her to Trump Tower during that same time period, and assured her, “I’m still working on the Apprentice thing.”
She said they last saw each other in the summer of 2007, when he invited her to see him at a bungalow he was staying at in Los Angeles. She said he “kept trying to make sexual advances,” but she shot him down. “I told him I was on my period,” she said. He said he later called her and told her he hadn’t been able to get her on his show.
Payments made to Daniels by Trump’s then-lawyer Michael Cohen at the end of the 2016 presidential campaign are at the heart of the case, the first criminal trial of a former president. Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 in return for keeping quiet about her claims of a sexual encounter with Trump. Trump has denied the claim.
Daniels said her manager Gina Rodriguez spoke to her about going public with her story for money in 2015 after Trump announced he was running for president. The manager did not have much success shopping the story until after the Oct. 2016 release of the so-called “Access Hollywood” tape, in which Trump was recorded in 2005 bragging that he could grope women without their consent.
She said Rodriguez then told her that Trump and Cohen were “interested in paying” for the story and she agreed, because it meant the story — which he husband did not know about — would not become public. “I didn’t care about the amounts. It was just, ‘Get it done,'” she said.
Prosecutors say Trump repaid Cohen the money in payments that were falsely described as legal expenses and have charged him with 34 counts of falsifying business records. He’s pleaded not guilty.
Lawyer Susan Necheles told the judge before Daniels took the stand that she should not be allowed to testify about “any details of any sexual acts” because it would be “unduly prejudicial.” There’s “no reason it should be coming into a case about books and record,” she said.
Hoffinger said there would not be “descriptions of genitalia,” but “it’s important to us to illicit that she had sex with him, and how she felt about it.” Judge Juan Merchan said Daniels could testify that they had sexual relations, but to leave details out.
Trump, who Merchan has fined for repeatedly violating a gag order by attacking Daniels and Cohen, took to his social media platform before court to complain he’d “just recently been told who the witness is today.”
“This is unprecedented, no time for lawyers to prepare. No Judge has ever run a trial in such a biased and partisan way,” he wrote in a post that was taken down a short time later.
The Truth Social post went up shortly before the Associated Press first reported that Daniels was expected to testify on Tuesday. It’s unclear when Trump and his lawyers were told she’d be testifying — prosecutors have typically not been telling them who would take the stand until the day before, citing Trump’s record of witness commentary.
That Daniels would testify is not a surprise, however. Trump’s legal team had argued unsuccessfully that she should be barred from taking the stand, a request the judge requested before the trial started. Cohen is also expected to testify at some point.
Merchan fined Trump $1,000 on Monday morning, finding that he’d violated the April 1 gag order a 10th time. He warned that future violations could result in jail time.
Asked Tuesday whether corrections officials would be prepared for the logistical challenges of a former president being locked up, New York City Mayor Eric Adams said, “They’ll be ready.” Asked if he’d had discussions with corrections officials about such a contingency, Adams said, “Yes we have.”
Before Daniels, prosecutors called a longtime publishing executive to authenticate and read excerpts from some of Trump’s books.
Sally Franklin, an executive at Penguin Random House named Sally Franklin, read one from “How to Get Rich” that said, “For many years, I’ve said that if someone screws you, screw them back.”
An excerpt from another book featured Trump talking about how closely he tracks his money — something prosecutors will likely use to show he was well aware of what he was paying Cohen back for. “I always sign my checks so I know where my money is going,” he said in the excerpt.
In another, he said, “If people see your signature at the bottom of the check, they know you’re watching them and they screw you less.”
Prosecutors estimated on Monday that they’ve passed the halfway mark in their case, which is now in its third week of testimony.