With Donald Trump sitting just feet away, Stormy Daniels testified Tuesday at the former president's hush money trial about a sexual encounter the porn actor says they had in 2006 that resulted in her being paid to keep silent during the presidential race 10 years later.
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00:00 Stormy Daniels' testimony at Donald Trump's Hush Money criminal trial
00:04 compelled the former president's lawyers to ask for a mistrial.
00:08 Trump's lawyers told Judge Juan Marchand that Daniels went far afield of the
00:13 ground rules that were established for her testimony.
00:17 For months and months, defense lawyers, the prosecutors, and the judge
00:21 had been in talks and came up with rules for what Daniels could testify about
00:25 and what level of detail she could provide to the jury.
00:29 Several times during her testimony, Trump's lawyers
00:32 objected when they felt that she was going beyond
00:36 the scope of what had been established as the ground rules.
00:39 She talked about the sexual encounter in details that she was not supposed to,
00:44 they argued. But Judge Marchand, in denying that mistrial request, said
00:49 the defense did not try hard enough to object and prevent that testimony.
00:54 He said it was incumbent on them to speak out and stand up and try to
01:00 block her from sharing those details that they say
01:03 were prejudicial to their client. Once the mistrial matter was resolved,
01:07 Trump lawyer Susan Necklace started her cross-examination questioning of Stormy
01:12 Daniels. Necklace dug in on Daniels what she says
01:15 was a shifting narrative of the sexual encounter, the alleged sexual
01:19 encounter. Necklace pointed to an account that
01:23 Daniels reported in her book in 2018, compared that to some of the testimony
01:27 she gave in court on Tuesday. Necklace also pointed to
01:32 potential motivations for Daniels cooperating in this investigation
01:36 and in this trial. She pointed to
01:41 Daniels owing several hundred thousand dollars in legal fees
01:46 to Donald Trump as a result of various litigation that
01:50 emanated in the aftermath of the hush money deal at the heart of this
01:56 trial. Susan Necklace asked Stormy Daniels if
02:00 she wants to see Trump in jail. And Stormy Daniels said yes she did.
02:05 If he's found guilty in this case, he should be punished.
02:09 Necklace also asked Daniels if she was trying to extort Trump
02:14 when she was shopping her story or having a friend
02:17 shop her story in the press in the months leading up to the 2016
02:23 election. Stormy Daniels was forceful in her
02:25 response. She says that is false. She said she did not try to extort
02:30 Donald Trump. In fact she said she was not looking for money.
02:36 She wanted to tell her story. She did not want to be kept silent.
02:39 But when time was running out for the election
02:42 and Trump lawyer Michael Cohen made a deal to pay her $130,000
02:47 that's when she felt she needed to get paid before the election
02:51 because she felt Cohen was trying to leverage the election against her.
02:56 In her mind she felt that Cohen was trying to wait out the clock.
03:00 That if the election was held and if regardless of whether Trump won or lost
03:06 he wouldn't have to pay her the money. If Trump won
03:09 it wouldn't have mattered if the story came out. And if Trump lost
03:13 it wouldn't matter also because he would no longer be in a presidential campaign
03:17 that could be damaged by those revelations.