Adult film actress Stormy Daniels took the witness stand at former President Donald Trump's New York criminal trial on Tuesday, testifying under oath about the sexual encounter she says she had with Trump in 2006 and the $130,000 deal for her silence that was struck during the closing days of the 2016 presidential campaign.
Daniels described parts of the 2006 encounter in detail and said that at one point she thinks she "blacked out" and that Trump did not use a condom. That led Trump attorney Todd Blanche to "move for a mistrial" when the two sides returned from their lunch break, saying that Daniels' testimony was “unduly and inappropriately prejudicial.”
Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here to receive it weekdays.
"There’s no way to unring the bell in our view," Blanche said during a dramatic exchange with prosecutors.
Judge Juan Merchan shot down the mistrial request but acknowledged that "there were things that would have been better left unsaid,” and said he would strike some of her testimony from the record.
Daniels was the second witness called Tuesday. She testified that she met Trump at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe in July 2006. Describing their first meeting as a "very brief encounter," Daniels testified that she was 27 and remembered Trump being as old as her father — around 60.
Before Daniels, prosecutors called a longtime publishing executive to authenticate and read excerpts from some of Trump’s books.
Sally Franklin, an executive at Penguin Random House, read from "Trump: Think Like a Billionaire" that talked about how closely Trump tracks his money — something prosecutors will likely use to show he was well aware of what he was paying his onetime lawyer Michael Cohen back for.
"I always sign my checks so I know where my money is going,” he said in the excerpt.
Read more here →
Meanwhile: Judge Aileen Cannon has indefinitely postponed Trump’s classified documents trial in Florida pending the resolution of multiple pre-trial issues. The trial was scheduled to start May 20.