Stormy Daniels, also known as Stephanie Clifford, is now on the witness stand to testify in the criminal trial against former President Donald Trump.
She is one of two women whom prosecutors allege Trump paid to protect his electoral prospects when he first ran for the White House.
Testifying on Tuesday, she detailed how she first met Trump at a celebrity golf tournament in 2006. During the event, which was sponsored by the adult film company she was working for, Daniels said she was invited to a private dinner with Trump. During the dinner, Trump encouraged her to join his show, The Apprentice — a role she was ultimately turned down — and she detailed an alleged sexual encounter.
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The former president sat in the courtroom for his testimony, as he is required to do under New York criminal law, and was accompanied by one of his sons, Eric Trump.
Trump is charged with 34 felonies alleging he falsified New York business records to hide damaging information to influence the 2016 presidential election. Trump, who has pleaded innocent, claims the suit itself is “election interference” because it is disrupting his 2024 presidential campaign, as he must attend court every day and cannot campaign when he attends.
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Who is Stormy Daniels?
Daniels is an adult film actor who received a $130,000 payment from Trump’s then-personal attorney Michael Cohen in 2016, when Trump was first running for president. Daniels has said she had an affair with Trump after he married Melania and just after the birth of their youngest son, Barron.
Although Trump has denied the affair, in 2018 Cohen acknowledged the payment, and Trump acknowledged that Cohen represented him in the deal after previously denying it. In 2018 Cohen pleaded guilty to federal charges of violating campaign finance law “at the direction of a candidate for federal office,” among other charges, and was sentenced to three years in federal prison.
Daniels’ testimony on Tuesday detailed not only their first meeting in 2006, but also periodic calls from Trump after that from different New York numbers and public sightings with him. From 2008 to 2011, she said she had no contact with Trump; he went on to tell her about getting married, having a daughter and acting in mainstream movies and music videos.
She testified that in October 2016, InTouch magazine called her to tell her that someone had sold her story and another magazine wanted to publish it. She decided to do an interview with InTouch to try to get ahead of the story. Ultimately the story did not run, but instead appeared in an online tabloid magazine.
Daniels testified that her agent wanted to sell her story in 2016, after Trump announced his candidacy.
“My purpose was not money, but to get the story out. I didn’t care about the money,” Daniels said. “That was the best I’ve ever had. … Things were great.”
Daniels testified that in October 2016, she was presented with a nondisclosure agreement between herself and Trump. The jury was shown an email from Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen to Daniels’ lawyer detailing a $130,000 settlement agreement and a side letter identifying Daniels and Trump’s pseudonym in the agreement.
Daniels also tried to sue Trump for defamation in 2018, but the suit was dismissed. She tried to appeal the decision later in 2023, but lost the appeal, forcing her to pay Trump’s $120,000 in legal fees. That same month, Trump was indicted by a Manhattan grand jury.
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Earlier this year, a new documentary called Stormy was released on Peacock, detailing her life between 2018 and 2023 and the various legal and personal challenges she has faced since coming out.
How does she fit into the prosecution’s case?
Cohen’s payment to Daniels was investigated in 2018 for potentially violating campaign finance law. Trump has long argued that the payment had nothing to do with the election and that he was instead trying to protect his marriage and family and that Cohen acted alone.
But prosecutors argue that the payment violated a New York law prohibiting illegal conspiracies to “prop up” a candidate, and that the $420,000 reimbursement to Cohen was falsely described in Trump’s business records as a “legal escort” to cover up the illegal payment.
In opening statements for the trial, prosecutor Matthew Colangelo said they would work to show the jury how the payments were calculated and hidden for tax purposes as well as evidence that “Trump is a frugal businessman … but when it came to paying Cohen back, he didn’t negotiate the price down. He doubled it, so he could hide it as income,” Colangelo said.
Colangelo said the infidelity story with the porn star would have been damaging to the campaign and Trump “wanted to prevent American voters from knowing about that information before Election Day.”
“There was no retainer agreement, but rather he thought it was a clever way to pay back the money without telling Cohen,” Colangelo said, detailing that Cohen had submitted 11 “fake invoices” that were paid by checks with “false entries” signed by Trump himself.
In his opening, defense attorney Todd Blanch sought to discredit some of the prosecution’s witnesses, primarily Cohen, who has a history of perjury, and Daniels, also known as Stephanie Clifford, by pointing to the publicity they have received, pointing to their recent documentary, and how Trump won a defamation suit against them.
