Despite repeated objections from defense attorneys and occasional warnings from the judge, the former actress offered a detailed and sometimes graphic account of a relationship that Trump denies.
Former porn actress Steffany Clifford, known professionally as Stormy Daniels, described this Tuesday, during her testimony as a witness in the trial in New York of former US President Donald Trump for forgery of documents, the alleged sexual encounter between the two.
The former actress stated in court that, in the alleged meeting, the American magnate did not attack her verbally or physically, although he indicated an “imbalance of power” between the two and knew that the bodyguard was abroad.
“I told very few people that we had had sex because I was embarrassed that I hadn’t stopped it. [a tempo]”, he explained, adding that, after the meeting, he left “as quickly as he could.”
Stormy Daniels detailed that Trump, whom she said she saw as a man her father’s age, then 60, did not give her money or his phone number “or anything like that,” nor did he ask her to keep the meeting confidential. He didn’t even express himself. concern for his wife, Melania Trump.
The agency Associated Press describes how jurors seemed riveted as the former actress, despite repeated objections from defense attorneys and occasional warnings from the judge, offered a detailed and sometimes graphic account of a relationship that Trump denies.
The Republican politician and White House candidate accused of hiding a bribe to Daniels in his campaign accounts looked straight ahead as she entered the courtroom, then shook his head and whispered to his lawyers as he listened to testimony.
Trump will even be tried in the trial for fraud in the Stormy Daniels case
The testimony is a centerpiece of the case because in the final weeks of Trump’s 2016 Republican presidential campaign, Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, allegedly paid Stormy Daniels $130,000 (€120,000) to keep quiet about what she said. He says it was a strange and unexpected sexual encounter. after a celebrity golf outing in Lake Tahoe in July 2006.
Interrogated by the attorney, Daniels recounted how an initial meeting in a golf tournament, where they discussed the adult film industry, evolved into a brief sexual encounter that, according to her claim, Trump had at the initiative after inviting him to hang out and continuing to his suite at the hotel.
After being together, he said: “It was very difficult to find my shoes because my hands were shaking a lot.”
Trump reportedly said he hoped to meet the former actress again, but that she “just wanted to leave.”
Since the encounter was revealed, Daniels has become an antagonist to the version of Trump, sharing her story in a book and on television and criticizing the former president with derogatory tirades.
After several conversations with the judge and Trump’s lawyers, prosecutor Susan Hoffinger handled the questioning cautiously, instructing the witness to keep her answers brief and without additional details.
Judge Juan M. Merchán repeatedly rejected Daniels’ attempts to describe the encounter more vividly, removing several of his responses from the official trial records.
Cohen allegedly paid Daniels after receiving information that she was willing to make official statements to the National Researcher or on television confirming a sexual encounter.
oh Public Ministry accuses Trump of 34 crimes for alleged falsification of documentsin a plot with which he would have tried to hide the payment during the 2016 election campaign to Stormy Daniels to buy her silence and not talk about the extramarital relationship that occurred ten years earlier.
The charges Trump faces date back to an investigation launched by the Manhattan district attorney’s office after an alleged plan by the tycoon to hide several sex scandals in the media.
Michael Cohen, who was also vice president of the Trump Organization, arranged the payment by contributing the aforementioned amount from his own pocket and the former president is accused of returning the money by hiding it in various legal expenses in the company’s records.
Cohen was sentenced in December 2018 to three years in prison.
Source: Observadora
