Imagine if this story had come out right after the Access Hollywood tape.
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On Tuesday, the main event of Donald Trump’s criminal trial swept through the courtroom as the woman at the center of the hush money scandal, Stormy Daniels herself, showed up to testify against the former president. Trump previewed that it would be a big day when he posted on Truth Social—and then deleted—his apparent frustration that she was being allowed to testify. But the emotional intensity of having the woman at the center of this scandal describe her sexual encounter with Donald Trump that led to his arrest 17 years later—in front of the former president and his son, Eric, who was also present—is hard to describe.
There was a heaviness in the air, even if the former president’s main reaction to Daniels’ testimony was—as he’s done throughout the proceedings—to simply close his eyes. (Longtime Trump reporter Maggie Haberman wrote for the New York Times that an adviser told her Trump does this to “keep from blowing up,” adding that on Tuesday, he was “looking like his face is going to crack from tension.”)
After some brief objections at the start of the day over the level of detail offered by Daniels, the judge ruled that she would be allowed to describe some details of what happened, but guided the prosecution to keep it underdeveloped so as to not be “overly prejudicial” to the defense. Daniels, who was wearing a black hooded sweater and dark glasses, is famously open about her long career in the porn industry, as both a director and an actor. “How she ended up having a sexual act with him and in terms of the sexual act, it will be very basic,” prosecutor Susan Hoffinger promised. “It’s not going to include discussions of genitalia or anything of that nature.”
“There will be some details, very brief about the sexual act, very brief,” Hoffinger added.
Justice Juan Merchan laughed awkwardly at this, saying that we “don’t need” all the details, but he offered the prosecution some leeway to help them to establish Daniels’ credibility (which is sure to come under blistering assault on cross-examination this afternoon). Both Daniels and Hoffinger took full advantage of this leeway—and Trump’s team at times seemed slow to object, to the point that the jury ended up hearing a lot more details of the encounter than most in the courtroom were expecting.
“It’s fucking insane what the jury heard this morning,” said one journalist upon return after lunch.
What they heard was a full account of Trump’s encounter with Daniels that laid out in precise detail every aspect of the meeting (including that the sex itself was “brief”). What was perhaps the most jarring, particularly on the heels of last week’s testimony from Hope Hicks about the infamous Access Hollywood tape, is that this telling described the interaction as sexual coercion bordering on assault.
What Daniels shared was this: After a two-hour conversation in a hotel suite following a meeting at a celebrity golf tournament in Tahoe, Daniels testified that she went into the bathroom to use the facilities (where she pried through his toiletry bag, which included Old Spice, Pert Plus, and gold tweezers).
