(New York) Stormy Daniels and Donald Trump’s lawyer clashed Thursday during a muscular cross-examination, where the questions sometimes turned strange, going so far as to provoke the irritation of the judge.
During tense exchanges, former pornographic actress Stormy Daniels demonstrated great responsiveness and tenacity, while knowing how to be vulnerable, while the Defense mocked her career and attacked her credibility.
In this courtroom with white neon chandeliers, Stormy Daniels responded to the attacks, for hours, during the most intense sequence since the opening of Donald Trump’s criminal trial, the first for a former president of the United States .
The 45-year-old actress and director, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, was paid $130,000 at the end of the 2016 presidential campaign to keep quiet about a sexual relationship she claimed to have had with Donald Trump in 2006, a hidden payment at the center of the affair.
The billionaire denies any relationship. On Thursday, her lawyer Susan Necheles repeatedly accused the actress of having completely invented this sexual relationship, even going so far as to ask her: “You invented the whole thing, didn’t you? »
PHOTO ANGELA WEISS, VIA REUTERS
Donald Trump denies any sexual relationship with Stormy Daniels.
“No,” Stormy Daniels retorted categorically. In turn, she accused the lawyer of manipulating her words: “You are trying to make me say that things have changed, but it has not changed,” she said of her version of the facts.
Tarot cards
During this cross-examination, Mr. Trump’s lawyers tried to portray the actress as greedy, sleazy and deceptive.
The lawyer questioned Stormy Daniels about her decision to write a book recounting this relationship and to promote commercial products. “As if Mr. Trump were doing the opposite,” quipped Stormy Daniels.
Susan Necheles even went so far as to mention the actress’ interest in tarot cards and the paranormal, a way of making her seem like an unbalanced person.
PHOTO JANE ROSENBERG, REUTERS
Defense attorney Susan Necheles during her cross-examination of Stormy Daniels.
She then presented her as a person of fiction, mocking her work as a screenwriter and director of pornographic films by claiming that it made her good at distorting the truth.
“So you have a lot of experience making fake sex real,” she provoked.
“Wow, I don’t see it that way,” Stormy Daniels replied, adding that “sex is real.” Character names may be different. But sex is real. That’s why it’s pornography.”
If the story with Mr. Trump was false, “I would have written it so that it was much better,” she said.
At the end of this cross-examination, the Defense ended up asking the actress if she had any information on the accounting of Mr. Trump’s group of companies, which constitutes the heart of the case, to which she answered in the negative.
During a hearing held after the jurors had been dismissed, the judge did not hide his irritation with the conduct of the cross-examination.
Mme Necheles spent a lot of time on details mentioned by Stormy Daniels during her testimony, repeating them “over and over again in the ears of the jurors,” he pointed out.
And this even though Mr. Trump’s defense – who unsuccessfully requested on Thursday, for the second time, the cancellation of the prosecution – had opposed the presentation of this story. “I don’t understand,” he confided.