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A defense lawyer for former U.S. President Donald Trump belittled porn actress Stormy Daniels as a money-grubbing liar in a cross-examination of her at his criminal trial on Thursday. But she held fast to her claim that he invited her to dinner in his hotel suite in 2006, never brought food in, and then undressed to have sex with her.
Suggesting that the encounter at a celebrity golf tournament at Lake Tahoe in the state of Nevada never occurred, defense lawyer Susan Necheles told Daniels, "You have a lot of experience in making phony stories about sex appear to be real" in the more than 200 pornographic films she has acted in or produced.
But Daniels replied, "That's not how I would put it. The sex in the films is very much real, just like what happened to me in that room."
Necheles demanded, "You made all this up, right?" Daniels responded forcefully, "No."
"You're trying to make me say it's changed, but it hasn't changed," the 45-year-old Daniels said of her story.
Continuing, she insulted the 77-year-old Trump, who was sitting close by at the defense table.
If her unwanted encounter with Trump weren't true, Daniels testified, "I would have written it to be a lot better," drawing laughter in the courtroom.
Trump lawyer requests mistrial
After Daniels finished hours of testimony, Todd Blanche, another Trump defense attorney, for a second time this week requested a mistrial in the case on grounds that much of Daniels' testimony was prejudicial against Trump and unrelated to charges he faces, such as that she said she swatted him on his butt with a magazine.
New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan again rejected the bid for a mistrial. He effectively ruled that since the defense said in its opening statement that no Trump-Daniels sexual encounter had occurred, it opened the door for the prosecution to try to prove otherwise.
Merchan also denied Trump's request to modify a gag order that prohibits the former president from assailing witnesses or jurors in the case so that he could attack Daniels' claims because her testimony was finished. Merchan has already found that Trump has violated the gag order 10 times and fined him $10,000.
Trump, the first former president to face criminal charges, has denied Daniels' account of a one-night tryst a decade before he became president. He has also denied all 34 charges against him. If convicted, he could be placed on probation or imprisoned for up to four years.
Daniels said she had no direct knowledge of the charges Trump is facing, that he falsified business records at his Trump Organization real estate conglomerate to hide reimbursement of a $130,000 hush money payment to her to silence her claim of sex with Trump just as voters were heading to the polls in 2016.
Blanche said in court that prosecutors have decided to not call another woman as a witness, Karen McDougal, a Playboy magazine model, who claims she had a 10-month affair with Trump in 2006 and 2007 - another liaison that Trump denies.
National Enquirer tabloid newspaper publisher David Pecker testified earlier in the trial that he paid McDougal $150,000 for her story with the express purpose of killing the information to help Trump politically in 2016.
Prosecutors say that Trump, after he became president, sent monthly checks in 2017 to Michael Cohen, his erstwhile lawyer and political fixer, to reimburse him for the hush money payment he sent to Daniels out of his personal home equity line of credit.
Trump claims he made the reimbursement payments to Cohen for his legal work. The defense lawyers have suggested that the hush money payments were meant to hide Daniels' sex claim from his wife, Melania, and not to influence the outcome of the election eight years ago.
Trump assistant teary-eyed on stand
In later testimony Thursday, Madeleine Westerhout, Trump's one-time White House executive assistant who sat at a desk outside the Oval Office, said she helped set up a White House meeting between Trump and Cohen for February 5, 2017, less than three weeks after Trump was inaugurated as the country's 45th president.
Cohen, who later turned against Trump and served 13½ months in a federal prison for a campaign finance violation linked to the allegations against Trump and other offenses, is expected to testify extensively in the coming days.
Westerhout, who returns to the witness stand on Friday, remains loyal to Trump and became teary-eyed as she described how she was fired from the White House in 2019 when she indiscreetly shared details about the Trump family in an off-the-record dinner with journalists.
But she may have buttressed the defense contention that Trump was trying to protect his wife from the sordid details of his alleged affair with Daniels.
Westerhout told jurors how important Melania Trump was to him, saying they had a relationship of "mutual respect" and that Trump cared a lot about his wife's opinion.
"There was really no one else who could put him in his place," she laughed. "He was my boss, but she was definitely the one in charge."
In her cross-examination of Daniels, defense lawyer Necheles homed in on the porn star's claims in her earlier testimony Tuesday that while she did not say no to sex with Trump, she nonetheless in the moment was overwhelmed by the reality of it, and that she became lightheaded and nearly fainted after emerging from a bathroom in his suite.
"When you are not expecting a man twice your age in his underwear, absolutely," she told the 12-member jury. At the time, Trump was 60 and she 27.
"He did not put his hands on me, he did not give me any sort of drugs or alcohol, and he did not hold me, threaten me," she said. "My own insecurities in that moment kept me from saying no."
Attorney accuses Daniels of 'shilling'
Daniels often responded sarcastically to Necheles' questions implying that she made up aspects of the encounter. The defense lawyer noted that Daniels had often in the intervening years said Trump invited her for dinner.
"It was dinner," she said, "but we never got food." She added, "I'm very food motivated."
Necheles suggested that Daniels is an opportunist who has fabricated aspects of her story for profit, having collected more than $1 million from book sales and participation in a recently released documentary called "Stormy."
Necheles noted that Daniels has "an online store where you sell merchandise," including a "$40 Stormy Saint of Indictments Candle." Necheles accused her of "shilling" online.
"Not unlike Mr. Trump," Daniels responded.
Necheles recounted that Daniels has performed strip shows billed as "Make America Horny Again," a tag line Daniels said she did not like, and also sought money from reporters to tell her story of her encounter with Trump.
She said she wanted mostly to tell her story but kept quiet for a while after ultimately agreeing to the $130,000 hush money payment, which, after paying her lawyer, netted her $96,000.
But after her claim of the tryst was written about in U.S. news accounts more than a year after the 2016 election, she then frequently spoke with journalists about the case.
She told the jury on Tuesday she hates Trump and wants him sent to prison if he is convicted. But she said she had nothing to do with the charges against him and did not testify before the New York grand jury that indicted him more than a year ago.