We rejoin our regularly scheduled criminal trial, already in progress. From The New York Times:
Stormy Daniels, whose account of a tryst with Donald J. Trump is at the core of the first criminal trial of an American president, testified in excruciating detail on Tuesday about a sexual encounter with him that she said left her shaking and bewildered, and the hush-money payment that bought her silence. Ms. Daniels’s often explicit testimony prompted lawyers for Mr. Trump to seek a mistrial, but the judge in the case, Juan M. Merchan, denied the request. And after several hours of testimony by Ms. Daniels, the defense began a cross-examination that quickly turned combative. Susan Necheles, a Trump lawyer, sought to paint Ms. Daniels as a liar driven by greed. She brought up excerpts from Ms. Daniels’s book to make it seem that she had changed her story, and suggested she had fabricated an account of being approached in a parking lot by a man who threatened her to stay silent about Mr. Trump.
As the trial passed from the prosecution to cross-examination from the former president*'s lawyer, things apparently got a little, well, stormy. But first, the naughty bits.
Susan Hoffinger, the prosecutor, is now asking Stormy Daniels about having had sex with Trump, which Trump denies. “Did you at some point end up on the bed having sex with him?” Hoffinger asks. Daniels says yes. When she describes the position they were in, the defense objects, and the objection is sustained...The defense has been objecting to many questions and the judge has been sustaining a lot of them. He is not happy about this testimony. As we see how explicit this becomes, it's worth remembering the following: This is relevant testimony, given that this encounter is at the heart of the prosecution's case. But it also may be a risk for prosecutors. It’s very hard to know what jurors will make of it all.
Judge Juan Merchan apparently was visibly disturbed by the nature of the testimony. (Spoilsport!) And the defense came back after the noon break demanding that Merchan declare a mistrial.
Susan Necheles, Trump's lawyer, says that the defense team had moved to strike so much of this beforehand and Merchan still let it in. The judge bristles at the statement. She says that they were under the impression the prosecutors were doing what Merchan allowed during questioning. Merchan disagrees. Merchan adds, “I was surprised that there were not more objections,” admonishing the defense team. “The defense has to take some responsibility for that,” he says, adding that he did all he could. “I objected on my own,” he says.
Justice Merchan says he’ll rule now. He says he agrees that it would have been better if Stormy Daniels hadn't gone in certain directions, and says as a witness she is “a little bit difficult to control.” He adds, “Having said that, I do think” that there were “guardrails in place.” He adds: “I dont think we’re at the point where a mistrial is warranted.”
Through it all, the former president* fumed and fretted and took the usual courtroom siesta, and the thought persisted as to why he didn't get in front of this years ago? He could have copped to the canoodling and still been nominated. (We may dismiss the whole idea that he allegedly bought Daniels off to prevent bringing pain to his family because...I mean, c'mon.) By November of 2016, he might have been elected anyway. The Access Hollywood tape hurt him, but none of the bunglers running against him could make good use of it. (The AH issue was blunted by the release of the hacked DNC emails anyway.) Who was going to use Stormy Daniels against him if he'd admitted to their encounter? Ted Cruz? The tiny husk that was Marco Rubio? Please.
He's still denying the tryst entirely. I understand that deny-deny-deny-attack was the ur-lesson he got from the late Roy Cohn, but it's done nothing but hurt his case this time around. It's put his lawyers into the impossible position of admitting to the encounter for him. Every time they attack Daniels for being money-grubbing, which was pretty much the substance of the afternoon's cross-examination, they admit de facto that the encounter happened.
Trump has long denied Daniels’s story. But now the jury is being asked to weigh his words against hers directly as she reads his social media post, in which he says he hasn’t seen her since the golf course she described earlier. He also denies having had sex with her. Daniels testified otherwise this morning. Right now, she is reading aloud, rattling off the insults Trump uses for her, including “horseface” and “sleaze bag.” And she says the post is false, as Trump sits quietly at the defense table.
Afterwards, he took his usual turn at the bank of microphones as the sole occupant of his own universe. From NBC News:
Speaking to cameras for a few minutes outside of the courtroom, Trump said, "This was a very big day ... a very revealing day....Their case is totally falling apart," he said about the DA's office. "This whole case is a disaster." Trump, as usual, complained that he should be out on the campaign trail instead of sitting for this trial. "I'm stuck. I'm here instead of" Georgia, New Hampshire, Wisconsin and other states, he said. He didn't comment on the specifics of the testimony today or Stormy Daniels as a witness. He also said that Biden's backers "seem to be funding" the protests at college campuses — although he did not explain why they would pay for protests that are critical of Biden. "I think our government ought to find out who they are, where they're from" and treat them like "the J6 hostages."
More, unavoidably, to follow.
Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976. He lives near Boston and has three children.
