On the second day of Stormy Daniels’ testimony, Susan Necheles, a lawyer for Donald Trump, tried to portray the former porn star as an absolutely unreliable witness. Necheles made no secret of her disdain for Daniels’ career in the porn industry. She portrayed her as an unscrupulous fortune hunter and Trump hater. The lawyer focused on inconsistencies in Daniels’ testimony about the sex she allegedly had with Trump in 2006: she highlighted minor differences between what Daniels said during the hearing and what she had previously stated in a book and an interview.
Playground level
The question is whether that made much of an impression on the jury. Daniels, who was editor of the school newspaper in high school and who revealed to her poor background earlier this week that she had never been able to study and had ended up in porn, often replied very wittily.
When asked why she had called Trump “an orange turd” in a tweet, Daniels said: “That was in response to a Trump fan who called me a human toilet, which I am not. I then wrote that if I am a human toilet, I am also well placed to flush an orange turd. If I am seriously insulted, don’t I have the right to hit back?”
Trump himself constantly calls Daniels “horsehead” Daniels, the jury undoubtedly knows that too. So it is doubtful whether Necheles’ accusation that Daniels uses “playground level language” makes an impression. Daniels regularly managed to bounce back the ball cleverly during the hearing, such as when she was accused of making money by selling anti-Trump stuff on her website. She is offering, among other things, a plastic candlestick with “Holy Stormy of the Indictments” for $40.
“I do sell merchandising,” she replied. “Just like Mr. Trump does.” He recently started selling his own Bibles for $59.99.
Daniels found it more difficult by persistently insisting that she was not primarily after money when she wanted to tell her story about Trump to the media in the fall of 2016 and was paid $130,000 to keep quiet. The defense played a recording that Michael Cohen (who paid the hush money on behalf of Trump) made of a conversation with Daniels’ lawyer. In that recording, he claims that Daniels had cheated on him: he absolutely had to complete the deal before the 2016 elections, otherwise the price would drop.
But the defense mainly tried to portray Trump as a crazy woman whose words should not be believed: for example, there was a lot of attention for a podcast in which Daniels acts as a medium and tries to get in touch with dead people.
“Power Imbalance”
The main focus of the cross-examination, however, was what Necheles called “the alleged sex from 18 years ago.” In this way, she tried to present the lovemaking as irrelevant – which it would be if Trump had not denied it and paid hush money for it through tampering with the books.
In an extremely condescending tone, the lawyer questioned the ex-porn star about her work and said: “So you have a lot of experience in making up fake stories about sex?” Daniels quickly retorted: “The sex in those films is real, just like what happened to me in that room with Trump. If I had made that scene up, it would have been written a lot better, believe me.”
Necheles tried to pin Daniels down on small differences in her past and present versions. Who was it who first invited her to dinner in his suite, Trump himself or his bodyguard? And had they dined in that suite first or not?
According to journalists in the room, that came across as real nitpicking. Daniels’ explanation: “I called it a dinner party because he invited me to it, but no food came – which I thought was a shame.”
Daniels also seemed very credible when she was confronted about the “power imbalance” in bed. She herself dismissed the suggestion that this amounted to forced sex. “It was my own insecurity,” she said.
Daniels testified for about eight hours over two days. At the end, prosecutor Susan Hoffinger asked whether the truth about the story had given her more positive or negative results. “Negative,” said Daniels, with a lump in his throat.
