[ad_1]
Daniels walked briskly into the courtroom on Tuesday (just after midnight Wednesday AEST) before being sworn in, not pausing to look at Trump, who was staring straight ahead as she entered the room.
Daniels’ testimony, even if sanitized for a courtroom setting and stripped of detail, is the most anticipated spectacle in a trial that has switched between tabloid elements and dry archival details.
Courtroom testimony from an adult film performer about an intimate encounter she says she had with a former US president and presumptive Republican nominee adds to a long line of historic firsts in a case already laden with frivolous allegations of sex , payments and concealment .
In the early moments of her testimony, Daniels told jurors questioned by prosecutors that she met Trump because the adult film studio she worked for at the time sponsored one of the golf course’s holes.
They were talking about the adult film industry and its directorial abilities when the Trump group passed by. The famous real estate developer remarked that she must be “smart” if she was making movies, Daniels recalled.
Later, in an area known as the “gift room,” where celebrity golfers collected gift bags and items, Trump remembered her as “the smart one” and asked her if she wanted to go to dinner, Daniels said.
Daniels testified that she accepted Trump’s invitation because she wanted out of a planned dinner with her colleagues from the adult film company. She said her publicist at the time suggested in a phone call that Trump’s invitation was a good excuse to skip the work dinner and would “make a great story” and perhaps help her career.
“What could go wrong?” she recalled the publicist saying.
Prosecutors and defense attorneys argued earlier in the day about the contours of her testimony.
Trump’s lawyer, Susan Necheles, asked that Daniels be barred from testifying about the “details” of the alleged sexual contact. Prosecutor Susan Hoffinger said such details were relevant to her credibility, but also offered assurances that they would be “really basic.” Judge Juan M Mercan agreed to allow limited testimony.
At the time of the Daniels payment, Trump and his campaign were alarmed by the Oct. 7, 2016, release of the never-before-seen 2005 memo, according to testimony. Access to Hollywood footage of him bragging about grabbing women’s genitalia without their permission.
January 6: The Day That Shook American Democracy
The candidate spoke with Cohen and Hope Hicks, his campaign press secretary, by phone the next day as they tried to limit the damage from the tape and keep his alleged affairs out of the press, according to testimony.
Cohen paid Daniels after her attorney at the time, Keith Davidson, indicated she was willing to make on-the-record statements to National Enquirer or on TV confirming a sexual encounter with Trump.
National Enquirer editor Dylan Howard alerted publisher David Pecker and then, at Pecker’s direction, told Cohen that Daniels was campaigning to go public with his allegations, prosecutors said. Daniels previously tried to sell her story to another celebrity gossip magazine, Lifestylein 2011.
The first witness on Tuesday was Sally Franklin, an executive at Penguin Random House, which publishes several of Trump’s books through one of the company’s imprints.
Prosecutor Becky Mangold had Franklin read excerpts from the 2004 volume Trump: How to get rich it illuminated Trump’s approach to business. The testimony appeared to be designed to show that Trump was hands-on with his company and was ready to exact revenge on those he believed had wronged him.
Among the takeaways: “If you don’t know every aspect of what you’re doing down to the paper clips, you’re setting yourself up for some nasty surprises” and “I’ve been saying for years if someone screws you up, screw them back.”
Jeffrey McConaughey’s testimony provided an important building block for prosecutors trying to pull back the curtain on what they say was a cover-up of corporate transaction records designed to protect Trump’s Republican presidential bid during a key period in the race. It centers on a $196,000 payment by Cohen to Daniels and the subsequent refund Cohen received.
McConney and other witnesses testified that the refund checks were drawn from Trump’s personal account. Still, despite jurors seeing the checks and other documentary evidence, prosecutors did not elicit testimony Monday showing Trump dictated the payments be recorded as legal fees, a designation prosecutors say is intentionally deceptive.
McConey admitted under cross-examination that Trump never asked him to register the refunds as legal expenses or discussed the matter with him at all. Another witness, Deborah Tarasoff, an accounts payable supervisor at the Trump Organization, said under questioning that she had not received permission to cut the checks in question from Trump himself.
“You never had any reason to believe that President Trump was hiding anything or anything like that?” Trump lawyer Todd Blanche asked.
“Correct,” replied Tarasov.
“The $1,000 fines don’t seem to act as a deterrent.” Therefore, going forward, this court will have to consider a prison sentence,” Murchan said before jurors were brought into the courtroom.
Trump sat forward in his seat, glaring at the judge as he delivered the ruling. When the judge finished speaking, Trump shook his head twice and folded his arms.
Yet, while Murchan warned of prison in his starkest and direct warning, he also made clear his reservations about a step he described as a “last resort”.
“The last thing I want to do is put you in jail,” Murchan said.
“You are the former president of the United States and probably the next president as well. There are many reasons why incarceration is really a last resort for me. To take that step would be disruptive to this proceeding.”
[ad_2]
