The courtroom transcript and eyewitness accounts can not do justice to the leisure worth of Stormy Daniels’s testimony in Donald Trump’s felony trial on Tuesday.
However these of us contained in the courtroom are unsure of her influence on the case, particularly since we haven’t but heard all of what’s going to absolutely be a protracted and blistering cross-examination.
The poised, good and sassy black-clad witness — blond in entrance and brunette in again, with an enormous tattoo on her proper decrease arm — advised a narrative that’s acquainted to tabloid aficionados however grew to become way more highly effective in courtroom.
She spared no juicy particulars, from precisely and convincingly explaining how she met Trump at a 2006 golf event in Lake Tahoe; how he met her in his resort suite clad in pajamas and she or he teased him about pondering he was Hugh Hefner; how Trump, sprawled in his boxer shorts on the mattress, stunned her when she got here out of the lavatory; how that they had temporary intercourse, although her point out of “the missionary place” was stricken from the file; how Trump invited her to different occasions with the lure of a doable look on “Celeb Apprentice” earlier than, extra not too long ago, describing her as “Horseface” and a “sleaze bag.”
Trump has denied every thing besides assembly Daniels briefly in Lake Tahoe. After listening to her testimony, it’s exhausting to think about any jurors believing him.
However that hardly means they purchased all of Daniels’s testimony. The least credible half got here when she claimed that she was not in it for the cash, however for “security” as a result of she had been confronted by a menacing man in a Las Vegas car parking zone within the presence of her daughter.
My sense is jurors intuited that she would really feel safer if she both signed the nondisclosure settlement, defending her from threats, or went public with the sexual encounter, which might imply that if one thing unhealthy occurred to her, everybody would know why.
I requested a number of girls within the courtroom how they thought girls on the jury would react and opinion was divided, with some saying Daniels got here throughout as self-regarding and untrustworthy. What all of us agree on is that juries usually reply to actual and assumed messages from the choose.
It helped the protection that Justice Juan Merchan sustained virtually all objections to particulars in her testimony and, when the protection attorneys did not object, did it for them.
Earlier than the jury was summoned again from its lunch break, the protection made a movement for a mistrial, saying the small print have been too prejudicial.
However Merchan rejected the movement. He mentioned “some issues ought to most likely have been higher left unsaid,” however in equity to the prosecution, “the witness was a bit of exhausting to regulate.” When he added, “I used to be stunned that there have been no more objections,” I imagined steam popping out of Trump’s ears.
Even earlier than cross-examination, it was clear Daniels had quite a lot of inquiries to reply about how she has exploited her time within the highlight.
However my guess is that jurors will finally conclude her testimony was a enjoyable however essentially irrelevant a part of this trial.
