Donald Trump plays in court with the same philosophy as in politics: the best defense is a good attack. And so he tried to convince the twelve members of the Manhattan jury this morning that the culprit in his story of adultery, bribery and document falsification is Stormy Daniels, the woman with whom he allegedly slept in 2006 and whose silence he bought with $130,000. a decade later, in the middle of the electoral campaign. That payment, made by his former lawyer Michael Cohen and reimbursed a year later by Trump, is at the center of a high-profile state case that could put a former president of the United States in prison for the first time in history.
After the extensive and detailed testimony that the porn actress gave on Tuesday, in which she recounted the “traumatic” sexual relationship she had with Trump in the suite of a resort on the shore of Lake Tahoe (Nevada), and that the mogul continues to deny , this Thursday it was the Republican’s legal team’s turn for questioning, represented by lawyer Susan Necheles.
In two hours of fierce and tense interrogation, Necheles has tried to characterize Daniels as a woman who only sought fame and money from Trump, as a liar who invented the story to extort the then candidate and as a dishonest person who accepted the bribery to, two years later (in 2018) end up recounting the encounter in detail in a book, a documentary, publications on social networks and interviews with the media.
One of the objectives of their strategy is to distract the jury’s attention from a case in which Trump’s infidelity is not being tried, not even bribery, which is not a crime in New York. The magnate is accused of 34 crimes of document falsification, which he allegedly incurred when he recorded as his company’s legal expenses the payment to his former lawyer, Cohen, who had been in charge of initially transferring the $130,000 to Daniels. A payment that he cannot deny because it was recorded and because Cohen himself admitted it and was convicted of it in 2018.
The prosecution, headed by Alvin Bragg, considers that the charges are aggravated – and become criminal – because the falsification of financial documents served to commit another crime against New York’s campaign finance laws, since the bribery sought ” adulterate the 2016 elections” by trying to conceal relevant information about the candidate from the American people.
In their questions to the witness, the defense has tried to discredit Daniels’ version of the “alleged sex” she had with Trump 18 years ago. “You made it all up, right?” Necheles said in one of the most tense moments of the session, in which the actress was combative and firm at all times.
The defense has endlessly exploited the contradictions in Daniels’ multiple descriptions of the relationship over the years. For example, in the past he has claimed that Trump directly approached her to talk to her to invite her to dinner, but on Tuesday he claimed that he was her bodyguard. Additionally, on Tuesday he said that before sex they had “dinner” in the resort suite, but today he claimed that no food was ever served.
“You have a lot of experience in making fake sex sequences look real,” said Necheles, drawing on her job as a porn actress. “I wouldn’t say it like that,” Daniels responded, “sex in movies is very real, just like what happened to me in that room.” If that story were invented, “I would have written it much better than how it happened,” she joked, unleashing timid laughter in the criminal courtroom. Necheles has also asked her about her hobby of being a medium, since Daniels stated in a podcast that she is capable of speaking with the dead. Her goal is to caricature her as a person with paranormal beliefs and, consequently, no credibility.
The defense has also insisted on the motives that led Daniels to accept the bribe, which occurred in 2016 as part of a confidentiality agreement. Necheles has asked him if he asked Trump for financial compensation for not telling the story. “No,” he replied, “I only asked for money to sell my story” to the media.
The actress declared on Tuesday that she was never interested in money, something that the defense has pointed out today as an inconsistency. And she has estimated the profit obtained from her book, her documentary and the merchandising products she has been selling in the last decade at one million dollars, such as a $40 candle in which she appears as a “saint to blame.” . Daniels has responded that it is her right to tell her story and benefit financially from it: “Trump does the same thing,” she said, selling products related to her four criminal trials. And she has insisted, as on Tuesday, that making her affair with the tycoon public has also harmed her, with her dismissal and the cost of hiring lawyers and bodyguards for her and her family.
Daniels has claimed that he accepted “an offer” of money in exchange for his silence because he was “running out of time.” He was referring to the 2016 presidential election, after which his story would have been worth less money. But she was also driven to accept the money, she has claimed, by the fear that a public revelation of her relationship with Trump, a celebrity who by then already had a loyal following, would turn against her. mass of followers.
These details do not affect the substance of the accusation of document falsification and violation of electoral laws, but they could influence the jury’s perception of the actress. Its twelve members must reach a verdict on Trump’s guilt in the coming weeks. Once Daniels’ testimony is over, the prosecution’s main witness, the Republican’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, is expected in the criminal courtroom next week, who will be able to give more details about the way in which the bribery around which he was carried out and declared. This trial is as high-profile as it is historic.
