“This judge is giving me a gag order and said you’ll go to jail if you violate it,” Trump griped. “And frankly, our Constitution is much more important than jail. It’s not even close. I’ll do that sacrifice any day.”
Shit, that means he won’t violate it, right?
It’s the gag order equivalent of that one guy who gets into “fights”, but is constantly telling his friends, “Hold me back, Bro!” He gets to “look tough”, but he never has to actually fight anyone.
Stormy says Trump was wearing a ridiculous set of silk pajamas and she made fun of him for it. I bet this will be the part of her testimony that will annoy Trump the most – that he’s a weirdo schlub who wears wierd PJs to a dinner with a porn star.
I don’t know, this might annoy him too…
“I ended up spanking him, and after that he behaved much better… you remind me of my daughter.”
That wasn’t part of today’s testimony nor will it be. The judge said they could say they had sex but not the details.
Photographers get a few minutes in the morning to take pictures of Trump in the courtroom. He’s been very disciplined about scowling and looking tough for those minutes. Until today…
Just more thing he’s going to hate about today.
“I move that the last statement be yada yada’d from the record.”
Per cnn updates:
Most recent at the top.
“The intention was pretty clear, somebody stripped down to their underwear and is posing for you,” Stormy Daniels testified.
“He stood up between me and the door. Not in a threatening manner. He didn’t come at me, he didn’t rush at me. Nothing like that," Daniels said.
“When I exited he was just up on the bed, like this,” Daniels said, lifting her leg up from her chair.
Stormy Daniels says she “felt like the room spun in slow motion” when she left the bathroom.
“I felt the blood leave my hands and my feet almost like if you stand up too fast,” Daniels says. “I thought, ‘oh my god, what did i misread to get here?’”
“At first I was just startled, like a jump scare. I wasn’t expecting someone to be there, especially minus a lot of clothing,” she says of Trump, who she says was sitting on the bed in boxers and a T-shirt.
Judge Juan Merchan tells prosecutors he thinks “the degree of detail we’re going into here is just unnecessary.”
“When she comes back to the stand, we can move it along more quickly,” Merchan says, referring to when Stormy Daniels takes the stand again
Stormy Daniels in her testimony alluded to how Donald Trump’s status compared to hers created an intimidating power dynamic, CNN Chief Legal Correspondent Paula Reid said.
Daniels explained how the hotel room was bigger than her past three houses.
“She also testified that she came from a poor background, which added to the asymmetrical power dynamic between the two,” Reid noted.
Stormy Daniels says she and Trump talked for about two hours.
“Did you sense any red flags or concerns about being there?” prosecutor Susan Hoffinger asks.
“No,” Daniels says.
The testimony has now turned to the possibility of Stormy Daniels being on “The Celebrity Apprentice.”
Daniels recalls that Donald Trump told her that she “should go on his television show.”
“I said: ‘Even you don’t have this much power.’ He said: ‘You remind me of my daughter because she’s smart, blonde and beautiful and people underestimate her.’ The way he framed it did actually make perfect sense,” Daniels said.
She recalled being concerned that she couldn’t win and that would hurt her image and the stereotype she felt she represents. “What if I lose on the first episode?” she recalls asking. Trump then suggested he could tell her the challenges ahead of time, she says.
Daniels is describing her mindset at the time, saying she has "nothing against the adult entertainment industry. I have no shame, that’s who I am. But I also wanted to direct other, bigger things.
Trump showed Stormy Daniels a magazine cover he was pictured on and she testified that she told him she hadn’t seen it.
“Not like I made a habit of reading financial magazines as a 27-year-old stripper,” she says on the stand.
Daniels says she snapped at him. “Are you always this rude? Are you always this arrogant and pompous? You don’t even know how to have a conversation,” she recalls. She testified she spanked him with the magazine “right on the butt.”
Trump mouthed something to himself as she told the story, looking annoyed.
Stormy Daniels says she remembers sitting at the end of the bed. She says “it was really hard to get my shoe on because my hands were shaking so hard.”
“I just left as fast as I could. That was it,” she says
Stormy Daniels testified that Donald Trump did not express concern about his wife Melania when they had the encounter.
Daniels confirmed he also didn’t ask her to keep it confidential.
“I told very few people that we had actually had sex because I felt ashamed that I didn’t stop it,” Daniels said.
Donald Trump has gestured to his attorney Susan Necheles or tapped her arm, prompting her to object a few times during Stormy Daniels’ testimony about her memory.
He is engaged with the defense as Daniels’ direct examination continues.
Prosecutor Susan Hoffinger tried to ask Stormy Daniels about her memory, leading to an objection by Trump attorney Susan Necheles.
The judge asked them to come to the bench.
Hoffinger had asked Daniels if there were things she remembered later about the encounter.
While the attorneys are still at the bench, Trump’s attorney Emil Bove and Trump are in a conversation at the defense table, as they have been during most side bars today.
Stormy Daniels testified she met Trump at a night club the next day.
His bodyguard Keith Schiller called her and asked if she would meet with Trump again, and she agreed because it was in public.
Trump was at a table with football player Ben Roethlisberger when she approached them.
“He introduced me as his little friend Stormy to ‘Big Ben,’" she said. Daniels confirmed he addressed the football player as "Big Ben”.
Trump called her “honey bunch” lol
He can’t help himself.
Little surprised the prosecution didn’t coach her sufficiently to avoid this but I guess coaching will only get you so far:
The judge, Juan Merchan, is clearly unhappy with the Stormy Daniels testimony.
He warned prosecutors before the trial resumed after the morning break that much of her testimony had so far been irrelevant to the case – and at times it has felt like Daniels gossiping for sport, except for when the mood turned serious when she talked about how she came to have sex with Donald Trump.
Still, Judge Merchan on multiple occasions has now admonished Daniels for talking at length about the encounter, often in an unserious manner and at times making faces.
“Just listen to the question and answer the question,” Merchan has instructed her, after sustaining objection after objection from the defense
Let’s see if she can do it 9 more times without spending a day in jail.
Stormy Daniels says in the weeks after they met, she began speaking with Trump often, at times once a week.
“I’d always put him on speaker phone,” she says, noting that “dozens and dozens of people” heard her on the phone with Trump. She adds that she didn’t tell him when he was on speaker phone.
Daniel also notes that Trump called her “honey bunch,” which she says was “weird.”
When asked why she continued to speak to Trump after meeting him she testified, “My publicist thought it was a good idea to continue the conversation with him about the television show.
Donald Trump gave Stormy Daniels his assistant Rhona Graff’s phone number around the summer of 2006, Daniels says.
She recalled writing it on a piece of paper by her bed then later entering it into her phone.
The jury is shown a contact from Daniels’ phone. It is “D Trump Rona,” a reference to Graff.
Remember: Graff testified that she recalled entering Daniels cell phone number into Trump’s Trump Organization contacts. She was listed in Trump’s system as “Stormy.”
That contact was just displayed to the jury, and Daniels confirmed that is her phone number.
Stormy Daniels met with Trump in 2007 at the launch of his Trump vodka brand, she testified.
Daniels said she agreed to meet Trump because “for the same reasons.”
“I wanted to maintain that sort of relationship because the chance to be on the ‘Apprentice’ was still up in the air. It would have been a great thing. It was a public place,” she said.
Daniels said that she met Trump at his VIP booth. “He leaned over and gave me a kiss and shook my friends’ hand,” she said.
Daniels said that hundreds of people were at the event.
At Donald Trump’s vodka launch party, Stormy Daniels says Trump introduced her to his friend Karen. She later learned it was Karen McDougal, she testifies.
She says she also invited Trump to come to a show where she was performing. “It was a public place, lots of witnesses,” Daniels said.
Daniels says when she arrived at Trump Tower, she met with Rhona Graff and then she and her assistant were brought into his office.
The meeting was very fast, she says. Trump told her again, “I’m still working on the ‘Apprentice’ thing. I got some push back; I pushed back.”
It was put together “the same way it always did. He’d call from a New York number or Keith’s number or Rhona’s (Graff),” she said, adding that “he said he had it almost sorted out for the show” — something he’d say every time he called to get together with her.
When she left, Daniels says that Trump told her he wanted “to get together again, miss you, the usual.”
When asked again if Trump told her to keep it confidential or seemed like he wanted to hide their relationship, Daniels said, "absolutely not.”
Stormy Daniels said she did not see Donald Trump in person again after this meeting at the Beverly Hills Hotel.
He eventually called to tell her he’d been “overruled” and couldn’t get her on “The Apprentice.” She stopped taking his calls after that, except one time when he called to tell her he didn’t know Jenna Jameson would be on “The Apprentice.”
She said he thought she’d be mad. “I didn’t care,” she said on the stand.
That was the last time she said she spoke to Trump.
Stormy Daniels is now describing how she ended up doing an interview with In Touch Weekly magazine.
Trump yawned as she explained that she was supposed to be paid $15,000 for the article. In Touch never ran the story in 2011.
Sounds like Trump’s seduction technique is straight out of this thread from 2008
off-topic post hidden by Staff
This is a little off-topic, but I’m wondering:
A porn star shaking with embarrassment and fear? Huh? What is she afraid of, which causes her hands to shake?
She just said that she spanked him on the butt, and after that “he acted much better.”
That sounds to me like she is in control of the situation, like you would expect from an experienced sex worker. This doesn’t seem like a situation of “me too” abuse, or a non-consensual situation (like Bill Cosby or Louie CK).
I read it as her not expecting to be having sex with him in the first place.
She was not expecting to have sex with trump.
From cnn updates:
Stormy Daniels is testifying that she met with Trump along with her publicist, whom she was dating at the time.
“Had you told your boyfriend at that time what exactly happened in the hotel room at that point?” prosecutor Susan Hoffinger asks.
“Not the sexual part,” Daniels says.
When Hoffinger asks why not, Daniels says, "Because I was ashamed.
“The intention was pretty clear:” On that evening, Daniels testified she was not threatened, but Trump was “bigger and blocking the way,” making her very aware of what she described as an “imbalance of power.”
What happened in the hotel room: Daniels provided a detailed account of what happened next to the court. She said she removed her clothing and was in “missionary position” with Trump. Afterwards, she said she “left as fast as I could.”
Lunch break until 2 pm.
I agree with the judge. We don’t need to hear about the Donald hump.