Stormy Daniels, echoing Donald Trump’s style, pushes back at lawyer’s attacks

Written by Jonah E. Bromwich, Ben Protess and Maggie Haberman,

Donald Trump, the onetime president, and Stormy Daniels, the longtime porn actor, despise one another. But when Daniels returned to the witness stand at Trump’s criminal trial Thursday, his lawyers made them sound a lot alike.

He wrote more than a dozen self-aggrandizing books; she wrote a tell-all memoir. He mocked her appearance on social media; she fired back with a scatological insult. He peddled a $59.99 Bible; she hawked a $40 “Stormy, saint of indictments” candle, that carried her image draped in a Christ-like robe.

During Thursday’s grueling cross-examination, Trump’s lawyers sought to discredit Daniels as a money-grubbing extortionist who used a passing proximity to Trump to attain fame and riches. But the more the defense assailed her self-promoting merchandise and online screeds, the more Daniels resembled the man she was testifying against: a master of marketing, a savant of social-media scorn.

“Not unlike Mr. Trump,” she said on the stand, though unlike him, she did it without the power and platform of the presidency.

Daniels’ appearance plunged the proceeding into turmoil as the defense pleaded with the judge to declare a mistrial. Daniels’ graphic account of a sexual encounter with Trump, they argued, had inflicted irreparable damage on the defense.

But the judge, Juan M. Merchan, rejected the request and rebuked defense lawyers, noting that their decision to deny that the tryst had even occurred had opened the door for much of her explicit testimony.

Her appearance also laid the groundwork for the prosecution’s star witness, Michael D. Cohen, who is expected to take the stand Monday, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Cohen, Trump’s former fixer, bought Daniels’ silence in the final stretch of the 2016 presidential campaign, the payoff that led to the charges against Trump, who is accused of falsifying records to cover up the scandal.

Over nearly eight hours of searing testimony across two days, Daniels recounted her story of a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006. She described accepting the $130,000 hush-money payment during his first presidential campaign. And, facing combative questions from his lawyers about subtle shifts in her story, she swung between defiance and vulnerability.

After a shaky performance on the stand earlier in the week, Daniels on Thursday conceded almost nothing.

When a prosecutor asked her a final question — whether her experience speaking out about Trump had been positive or negative — she choked up.

“Negative,” Daniels said, barely getting the word out, seemingly on the verge of tears.

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