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US President Donald Trump and adult film actress Stormy Daniels. Photo: Mary Altaffer / Tobias SCHWARZ / AFP
By Luc Cohen and Jody Godoy for Reuters
Donald Trump's sought to catch inconsistencies in porn star Stormy Daniels' various tellings of an alleged 2006 sexual encounter with Trump, part of an effort on Thursday to undermine her credibility as a witness in the first criminal trial of a sitting or former US president.
Daniels' unflattering account of a sexual encounter with Trump in a Lake Tahoe hotel suite in 2006 while he was married to his wife Melania riveted jurors on Tuesday, reminding US voters of some more lurid aspects of his 2017-2021 presidency as he campaigns to win back the White House this year.
Trump, 77, is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up his former lawyer Michael Cohen's US$130,000 payment to Daniels, 45, for her silence ahead of the 2016 election about the alleged encounter. Trump has pleaded not guilty and denies ever having sex with Daniels.
In nearly four hours of cross-examination on Tuesday and Thursday, defence lawyer Susan Necheles asked Daniels about her earlier testimony of the alleged encounter compared with versions in a book she wrote and interviews she gave over the years.
She asked Daniels why in a 2018 interview to Vogue magazine she did not mention that Trump's bodyguard had been outside the hotel room where the encounter happened. Daniels on Tuesday said her awareness of the bodyguard's presence contributed to a power imbalance that left her feeling uncomfortable.
"You made all this up, right?" Necheles asked Daniels at one point.
"No," Daniels said emphatically, sitting with her hands folded and legs crossed. She said she did not give all the details in each interview she gave and did not control which portions of her accounts that news outlets published.
Daniels denied her story had changed.
"You're trying to make me say that it changed, but it hasn't changed," Daniels said.
Trump, wearing a suit and a light blue tie, switched between leaning forward and looking at a small computer monitor on the defence table displaying evidence, and looking directly at Daniels while his lawyer questioned Daniels' story.
A Republican seeking to take back the White House from Democratic President Joe Biden in a 5 November election, Trump argues the trial is a politically motivated attempt to interfere with his campaign.
Prosecutors say Trump's efforts to obscure the paper trail corrupted the 2016 election by preventing voters from learning about a story that might have informed their vote.
Daniels' story of the alleged encounter has been public since 2018, and it may not matter much to voters who have already heard other stories of Trump's alleged sexual misbehaviour.
It is also peripheral to the accusations in the case focused on Trump's role in an alleged cover-up of Cohen's payment.
Just before ending her cross-examination, Necheles asked Daniels if she had knowledge of Trump's business records - part of an effort to paint her testimony as irrelevant to the charges at hand. "I know nothing about his business records, no, why would I?" Daniels said.
Before the lunch break on Thursday, Trump lawyer Todd Blanche said the defence would renew its motion for a mistrial on the basis of Daniels' testimony and challenge the judge's gag order on Trump as it relates to Daniels.
Defence suggests Daniels sought to profit off sex story
Daniels, wearing a black cardigan over a green dress, remained defiant in the face of Necheles' aggressive questioning and frequently snapped back at her with witty retorts.
Necheles sought to show Daniels had profited off of her story, showing jurors Daniels' social media posts advertising merchandise on her online store around the time Trump had been charged last year.
"That is me doing my job," Daniels said.
Trump's lawyers unsuccessfully sought a mistrial on Tuesday saying that she had "inflamed" the jury with unnecessary details about the alleged encounter like claiming that Trump did not use a condom.
Daniels' testimony on Tuesday clearly frustrated Trump, who at one point appeared to call it "bullshit", drawing a warning about witness intimidation from Justice Juan Merchan.
Merchan has fined Trump US$10,000 for talking about jurors and witnesses in the trial and warned that further violations of a gag order that is in place could land him in jail.
The case is widely seen as the least consequential of the four criminal prosecutions Trump faces. But the chances of the other three - which stem from efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Biden and his handling of classified documents - going to trial before the election are growing more distant.
He has pleaded not guilty in all the cases.
- Reuters