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  1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/09/trump-oil-industry-campaign-money/
  2. It's Friday!! Well, we couldn’t have asked for a clearer preview of what awaits us next week than that. We've ended the fourth week of the trial with the judge asking prosecutors to keep Michael Cohen from attacking Trump. Cohen, Trump's former fixer, is expected to begin his testimony Monday. Prosecutors acknowledged just now that they have little ability to control him, even though he is their witness. Cohen is central to the case. He says that the reimbursements to him were falsified at Trump’s direction. His face-off with Trump is expected to be one of the biggest moments of the trial. And after what was one of our quietest days in court so far, we got a small taste of just how explosive it is likely to be. Justice Merchan asks prosecutors to tell Michael Cohen that he is personally asking him to refrain from making any more statements about the case or Trump. “That comes from the bench,” Merchan says. Trump flashes a wide grin as the prosecutor Joshua Steinglass says he can’t control Cohen’s statements outside court. Then he shakes his head as court adjourns. Trump looks delighted as he stands up at the end of the proceedings. He sees Jeanine Pirro as he leaves and whispers, “Come.” Todd Blanche, one of Trump’s lawyers, is now asking the judge about Michael Cohen, the witness who Blanche says has continued to attack Trump on the social media platform TikTok. Blanche asks the judge to order prosecutors to instruct Cohen to stop talking until the trial is over. Joshua Steinglass, a prosecutor, says they have repeatedly asked witnesses, including Cohen, to remain silent but have little control over them. This is something of an acknowledgment that at least one or two witnesses in this case are hard for prosecutors to control, including Cohen, who is the key witness expected next week. For the last few minutes, the lawyers have been arguing about whether or not evidence should be allowed in that relates to Allen Weisselberg, the former chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, who is currently on Rikers Island after pleading guilty to perjury. The evidence, Weisselberg’s severance agreement, would show that he is still waiting to be paid his full severance by the Trump Organization. The judge is suggesting that prosecutors should, in fact, call Weisselberg as a witness, which appears as if it would be a major shift in their plan. Justice Merchan is very familiar with Weisselberg, having sentenced him to jail in the past. Joshua Steinglass, one of the prosecutors, says he expects to call two witnesses next week, and that it is entirely possible that they will rest by the end of the week. Keep in mind that we only have a three-day week next week. The trial is always off on Wednesdays, and we'll have next Friday off to allow Trump to attend his youngest son’s high school graduation. Monday will bring the appearance of Michael Cohen, Trump’s former fixer and lawyer, who will be a crucial witness for the prosecution and a likely the subject of a fierce cross-examination. The judge is beginning to discuss with both prosecutors and defense lawyers what the jury instructions may look like. This is an important part of the case, because of the complexity of the charges against Trump, which wrap in a secondary crime with which he is not charged: prosecutors have tried to convince jurors that second crime is an election crime. The jury instructions will tell the jury how to deal with that complexity. They are among the most important aspects of this case that still have yet to be decided. And they will help the jurors — two of whom are lawyers — decide whether the former president is innocent or guilty. Now Emil Bove, the defense lawyer, is cross-examining Jaden Jarmel-Schneider. He tries to win the witness over, first by asking him how he prefers to be addressed and then expressing sympathy as he acknowledges that a paralegal’s work can be boring. But Jarmel-Schneider isn’t having it. He says he enjoys his work, drawing laughter in the courtroom, including from at least one or two jurors. Its ironic that Bove suggested that detail-oriented work is boring, because it’s one of the aspects of lawyering that he has a reputation for excelling at. The defense lawyer is now poring over the tiny details of the data that Jarmel-Schneider worked with, apparently seeking to suggest to the jury that there are issues with the paralegal’s work. Bove sought to suggest that the reports were edited in a suspicious manner. But as prosecutors questioned the paralegal again, he clarified that the report appears in the abridged way it does because he was following directives from prosecutors. Bove is now up again for re-cross trying to raise more suspicion about the list of calls displayed on screen that is under discussion. We’re almost at the end of the day here. We are looking at a comprehensive chart that the district attorney’s office compiled of the 34 business records that prosecutors say Trump falsified. In total, there are 11 invoices, 11 vouchers and 12 checks, all relating to the reimbursement of Michael Cohen. This is the first time we’ve seen all of the documents laid out on a single screen. These went by quickly during testimony, so it makes sense that prosecutors would use Jaden Jarmel-Schneider's testimony to highlight them again. Jaden Jarmel-Schneider is expected to be our final witness of the day. Like Longstreet, he is a paralegal at the Manhattan district attorney’s office. Jarmel-Schneider tells jurors he was involved in the extraction of data from Michael Cohen’s phone. Having explained his work, the witness is now certifying specific exhibits: calls between various key witnesses, including Michael Cohen and Trump. They are then offered into evidence, and are accepted. Some of the records being entered into evidence today involve calls made by or to Cohen. It’s a good reminder Cohen is expected to take the stand Monday. Todd Blanche asks Georgia Longstreet about Michael Cohen’s use of TikTok, which defense lawyers have been furious about because he’s used it to comment on the case. He asks if she’s reviewed Cohen’s TikTok account. Longstreet is off the stand. One more witness to go today. The direct examination of Georgia Longstreet is over. She spoke about the long negotiations between Stormy Daniels’s representatives and The National Enquirer over a possible hush-money deal. Eventually, The Enquirer's editor, Dylan Howard, alerted Michael Cohen, who paid Daniels the hush money himself. Now Todd Blanche, one of Trump's lawyers, is cross-examining Longstreet. The text exchange delved into the amounts that Daniels’s representatives were asking for. Gina Rodriguez, her manager, originally asked for $250,000 for the story but was bargained down slowly. A curiosity that’s interesting to court-watchers in the room today: a very visible, dark spindle of hairspray running through Trump’s dyed blond hair, on the left side of his head over his ear. From the back of the courtroom, it appears almost like a strip of black tape running through his hair. Georgia Longstreet is now guiding the courtroom through a series of texts from 2016 between Dylan Howard, who was the editor of The National Enquirer, and Gina Rodriguez, who was Stormy Daniels’s manager. The texts — between two figures jurors are not expected to hear from directly — show that representatives for The National Enquirer and Rodriguez were in conversation for months about Daniels’s account. This suggests that The Enquirer was monitoring the story, as its publisher, David Pecker, said he had promised to do. In these texts, Rodriguez tells Howard that Daniels had sex with Trump. It is another piece of evidence presented by the prosecutors that matches Daniels's story — a story that Trump denies. Georgia Longstreet is reading a series of tweets from Trump, many of them attacks on Michael Cohen. She just read a post in which Trump unfavorably compared Cohen — who made the hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels and is expected to testify starting Monday — to Paul Manafort, who pleaded guilty to crimes and was sentenced to seven years in prison but was pardoned by Trump while he was still in office. Georgia Longstreet, a paralegal at the Manhattan district attorney's office who reviews social media posts as part of her role, is on the stand. This helps explain Alvin Bragg’s presence in the courtroom. Longstreet testified about Trump’s social media posts once during this trial already. Trump has been hunched over the defense table reviewing and writing on papers in front of him. He only looked up at Longstreet when she started reading his tweets. It sounds as if we only have two more witnesses today, and will end early. As we've reported, we expect Michael Cohen to take the stand on Monday. Before our break, the defense sought to exclude an interview with Larry King from 1999 where Trump apparently said he had extensive knowledge of campaign finance law. Emil Bove, one of Trump's lawyers, said the laws around campaign finance had changed since that interview. Becky Mangold, one of the prosecutors, argued that the “defendant’s admission that he had extensive knowledge of campaign finance law is relevant.” Justice Merchan just sided with the defense, and barred this piece of evidence. Jennie Tomalin is already off the stand. I suspect we will see several more minor witnesses today. And I wonder if at least one of them will work for the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which would explain why Alvin Bragg, the district attorney, is in court today. We are now looking at a page from Allen Weisselberg’s phone records. The new witness’s name is Jennie Tomalin. She works for Verizon. It would not be surprising if she were similar to the witness we just saw, Daniel Dixon, in that she is a custodial witness whose testimony may go relatively quickly. Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney who brought the case, hasn’t been here for each day of testimony. But he just walked into the courtroom and took a seat a few rows back from the prosecution table. Daniel Dixon’s role while testifying, which he was compelled to do by subpoena, was purely to authenticate phone records — not provide further explanation for their relevance to the case. The exhibit that he referenced will likely be referred to again in future testimony. The testimony of Dixon, an AT&T employee, is a good reminder that every call and text we send leaves an electronic trail. After a brief cross-examination, Dixon is done. These custodial witnesses can fly by. With Madeleine Westerhout off the stand, and Michael Cohen not expected to begin testifying until next week, we’re now anticipating a group of witnesses who we’re less familiar with. But that doesn’t mean they won’t be important. I’ve made the mistake here of referring to some witnesses as “dry.” A forensic analyst from Montana who is attending the trial recognized me in line yesterday and told me I should stop doing so: She pointed out, correctly, that especially in a records case like this, the “dry” evidence is often the most important. We appreciate her and all our close and careful readers. The next witness, Daniel Dixon, is from Florida. He will be questioned by the prosecutor Christopher Conroy. Dixon testifies that he is an AT&T employee, and that he is a lead compliance analyst at the company. He’s done that work for six to seven years. It’s not yet clear exactly what he’ll testify to — likely phone records related to the case. Trump appears to be bored by this witness's testimony already. He is reading through his stash of clips and writing notes on them. Trump appeared more interested in the testimony of the last witness, Madeleine Westerhout, who often praised him and his presidential administration. He also glanced in her direction as she left the witness stand. Madeleine Westerhout is now finished testifying. She smiles slightly and looks toward the defense table as she leaves. Westerhout admits that she spoke to the defense lawyer Susan Necheles two nights ago. Another indication that she is trying to be a helpful witness to the defense. Westerhout may not be personally hostile to Trump, but there’s a fairly broad perception she’s been damaging to the defense nonetheless. Briefly, as she concluded re-direct, Mangold sought to show the jury that Westerhout was a Republican loyalist, noting that her current boss, too, is a veteran of the Trump administration. Becky Mangold, the prosecutor, is now questioning Madeleine Westerhout again during re-direct, and suggesting that her actual knowledge about the reaction to the "Access Hollywood" tape was nonexistent. Susan Necheles, Trump's lawyer, just turned to the subject of Stormy Daniels, who remains a sore spot for the defense. Madeleine Westerhout testifies that the “whole situation” with Daniels was “very unpleasant.” But she does not seem to go where Necheles was hoping she would. Necheles asked if Trump brought up his family in relation to Daniels's claims, but Westerhout said that he did not. This is important because the defense is seeking to suggest that Trump was motivated to pay hush money because of concerns about his family, not his electoral chances. Westerhout seemed as if she’d be a perfect witness for that — she expressed a lot of admiration for Trump’s relationship with his wife. But here, she did not play along, hurting the defendant she used to work for and still admires. Susan Necheles is getting Madeleine Westerhout to say that Trump felt strongly that he needed to get back to people quickly and was frustrated with the slow pace of the mail in the White House. He found it disrespectful to friends who were trying to reach him. The implication to the jury: The Trump White House’s workaround mail system — used for the hush-money reimbursement checks — was not designed to conceal illegality, but for the entirely kosher purpose of promptly responding to mail. Through a long line of questions, the defense lawyer Susan Necheles is steering the witness, Madeleine Westerhout, toward describing the mailing arrangement for Trump in the White House as a system that was set up merely to get mail to him quickly. She is seeking to suggest that there was nothing nefarious about it. Necheles asks whether there was a similar set-up in previous presidential administrations as well. Westerhout admits that she doesn’t have personal knowledge about this but adds: “I can’t imagine it would have been any different.” And Necheles is now taking up a second, familiar defense line, asking Westerhout to describe Trump as a multi-tasker who did not pay close attention while signing checks. Overall, Necheles is seeking to cast doubt on the narrative the prosecution sought to establish through Westerhout yesterday: That Trump kept a close eye on private financial matters even while at the White House, and — in an unusual move — kept the checks out of the normal flow of White House mail by sending them to underlings. Susan Necheles is now again trying to suggest there were things happening in the chain of custody of mail sent to Trump that would have been out of Madeleine Westerhout’s view. The prosecutor Becky Mangold is now doing something we haven’t seen in this trial so far. She is questioning the witness’s knowledge of an exhibit that the defense wants in evidence. This kind of questioning is also known as voir dire, a phrase more familiar during jury selection. Prosecutors want to make sure Westerhout can testify truthfully about this evidence. While Madeleine Westerhout is testifying about Trump’s travel schedule, Trump has been glancing down to read what looks like a printed news article in front of him on the defense table. Part of the reason aides supply Trump with these articles during trials — and they did at his civil fraud trial last year as well — is to keep him occupied during the proeedings. Susan Necheles, Trump's lawyer, just sought to use Madeleine Westerhout's testimony to suggest that Trump and Allen Weisselberg may not have spoken much in 2017, when the alleged falsification of business records occurred. Prosecutors say that Weisselberg, the former chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, designed the specific way that Michael Cohen would be reimbursed for the hush-money payment he made to Stormy Daniels. Weisselberg worked in coordination with Trump, prosecutors say. Necheles is trying to cast doubt on that. Trump’s defense lawyers have been using every means available to them to try to create distance between Trump and the alleged crime. We are starting to see the “blame it on Allen Weisselberg” defense emerging. Madeleine Westerhout is back on the stand. Susan Necheles, one of Trump's lawyers — whose day ended yesterday with the judge harshly criticizing her performance, saying she did not object as she should have to some of Stormy Daniels’s testimony — is back questioning this witness, who worked for Trump in the White House. The prosecutors called Westerhout to testify about Trump’s behavior once he got to the White House, specifically whether he met with Michael Cohen and how he dealt with checks there. But the defense lawyers have sought to use Westerhout's testimony for their own purposes, asking her about her experience during the 2016 campaign. She didn’t testify about that period for the prosecution much — but the defense clearly thinks her knowledge of the campaign could be helpful. It's interesting to see the defense think through how to turn the prosecution’s witnesses to their own benefit. At the end of the day yesterday, Trump’s lawyers had asked that the gag order on the former president be modified to allow him to address Stormy Daniels’s testimony. The judge denied the request — but again said he was concerned about witnesses using the order as a “sword” to attack Trump when they knew he could not respond. Last night, Daniels did attack, goading Trump by tweeting: “Real men respond to testimony by being sworn in and taking the stand in court. Oh...wait. Nevermind.” It’s not yet clear whether the former president will testify. Some trivia on the stack of printouts Maggie mentioned Trump carrying. Trump likes to read through news clips and social media posts during long stretches in court. The printouts come courtesy of his aide Natalie Harp, who is never far from Trump’s side and usually sits two rows back in the courtroom. Trump’s other advisers have nicknamed Harp “the human printer” because she travels around with a portable printer so that she can quickly produce mood-boosting articles for Trump to read. She has also been spotted running after Trump’s golf cart on the golf course so that he can read things between holes. Trump is gesturing to this morning’s collection of positive press on the defense desk in front of him, and chatting with his lawyer Todd Blanche, who often whispers in his ear. Per a pool report, Trump complained about the temperature in the courtroom again, during his now-customary morning remarks to reporters positioned in the hallway outside. “I’ll go now sit in that freezing courtroom for 8 or 9 hours,” he said. “And think about being on the campaign all day.” The judge is on the bench and we are set to begin. Trump enters the courtroom, carrying a sheaf of printouts with him. He walks to the defense table and slams them down there. He’s trailed by two advisers, Susie Wiles and Boris Epshteyn. His lead lawyer, Todd Blanche, laughs and grins. The prosecutors are in, with their binders, folders and boxes of documents. They’re accompanied by Peter Pope, who worked on the case before leaving the office last year — he’s been here a couple of times a week. They’re a bit later than usual today, and accompanied by a paralegal who has doubled as a witness. Good morning from the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse, where today we will wind down the fourth week of Donald J. Trump’s trial and the third week of testimony. Madeleine Westerhout, the former assistant who sat outside the Oval Office while Trump was president, will return to the stand for more cross-examination. It’s not clear who else might testify today. The last major witness for the prosecution, Michael Cohen, is not expected until Monday. This has been an incredibly tense week in the courtroom, during which Stormy Daniels testified for two days and Westerhout described her interactions with Trump and his gatekeeper at the Trump Organization, Rhona Graff. Among the Trump admirers in the courtroom today is Jeanine Pirro, Trump’s longtime friend and a Fox News host.
  3. https://jalopnik.com/watch-brain-geniuses-get-arrested-for-refusing-to-answe-1851466410
  4. Oh, let us count the ways.
  5. Afternoon session: We're done with Madeleine Westerhout for the day and Susan Necheles will continue cross-examining her tomorrow. So far, Necheles has sought to use her testimony to paint a humanizing portrait of Trump as a kind boss and family man. She has also tried to portray Westerhout as somebody who was young, out of her depth and unfamiliar with the details of the materials she was handling on Trump’s behalf. Susan Necheles is now describing the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape as one of a number of events that rattled the Trump campaign, and through which he stayed calm while others were “freaking out.” It’s an interesting approach, as she tries to normalize the reaction to the “Access Hollywood” tape while also sneaking in some praise for her client. The prosecution is done. Susan Necheles, the Trump lawyer now cross-examining Madeleine Westerhout, brings up something she elided — that Trump wasn’t her preferred candidate when he was elected president. Many people have described her as unhappy on election night. There are two types of people around Trump. Some, like Hope Hicks, were true believers from the very beginning. Others, like Westerhout, were extreme skeptics turned converts. And we are seeing her trying to show proof of that conversion on the stand. Madeleine Westerhout is the second former close Trump aide to break down in tears during this trial. The first was Hope Hicks, whose desk was right near Westerhout’s just outside the Oval Office. That dynamic shows how the district attorney’s office reached into the ranks of people who were very close to Trump in order to build their case that he committed crimes. Both Westerhout and Hicks were witnesses sympathetic to Trump who nonetheless delivered damaging testimony against him. Westerhout has made it very clear in the last five minutes or so how much she cares about and respects Trump. But her testimony — including about the email scheduling the meeting with Michael Cohen and about Trump’s close attention to his finances while in the White House — could be very bad for her former boss. Madeleine Westerhout is testifying about how important Trump's wife, Melania, is to him, echoing Hope Hicks a bit as she says 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 laughs, addressing the jury directly. “He was my boss but she was definitely the one in charge.” Then Westerhout starts to cry as she recounts her experience of being forced out of the White House for indiscreetly sharing details about the Trump family in an off-the-record session with reporters. We are looking at an exchange in which Rhona Graff, Trump's former assistant, asked him whether he wanted to suspend a golf club membership or pay his dues, which totaled about $6,000. Madeleine Westerhout says she passed this questino along to him in a stack of checks he was given. Trump responded himself, by hand, asking that Graff pay the membership. This seems funny, but it’s also important: We’re seeing that Trump —while president! — did not ignore anything to do with money, and he responded in his unmistakable sharpie. The point, as the prosecution has so often made, is that Trump paid attention to financial minutiae. The cost of the golf membership that he was personally signing off on was less than one-fifth of the amount of each check he sent to Michael Cohen to reimburse the hush-money payment. The prosecution is effectively asking the jury to consider whether it’s plausible that Trump would scrutinize a minor payment in the $6000 range but be ignorant of the details of multiple checks for $35,000 each. While we expected Westerhout to be a significant witness with respect to with Cohen’s reimbursement checks, she’s also describing Trump’s day-to-day frugality and his attentiveness to his bottom line. Not only is Madeleine Westerhout corroborating a lot of the testimony we've heard already, but she’s linking that testimony to what she saw Trump do while he was in the White House. We’ve already heard that stapled packets of checks and invoices were sent to the White House to sign. But Westerhout is able to tell us that she sometimes saw Trump sign checks in his office, and that he signed them individually by hand. We are now looking at a text exchange between Madeline Westerhout and Hope Hicks, who has already testified. It’s from March of 2017, and says that Trump wanted to know if Pecker had been called. We are seeing the way that Trump was dealing with the hush-money payments and their agents from the White House. A different email is on screen right now, from Westerhout to Rhona Graff, saying that Trump — who often calls the media “the enemy of the people” — proudly sent a New York Times photo of himself boarding Air Force One for the first time to his family and wanted Weisselberg to see it. We’re now getting to the main reason Westerhout was called as a witness. The prosecutor asks her: “Was it your understanding that Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen had a close relationship in 2017?” She replies: “At that time, yes.” She’s now reading an email between herself and Michael Cohen in which she’s asking for his information in order to have him cleared to enter the White House. “Mr. Cohen was coming in to meet with the president,” she adds. Westerhout sent the email to Cohen on Feb. 5, 2017. It's evidence that directly helps corroborate the meeting that Cohen says that he and Trump had in the Oval Office in early 2017 to discuss reimbursements for the hush-money payment. Also on the list: Tom Brady, Sean Hannity, Ari Emanuel, Bret Baier and Mark Burnett, the creator of The Apprentice. The list includes some interesting names. Football figures like Tom Brady and Bill Belichick. Media figures like Bill O’Reilly and Jeanine Pirro, who is also a former district attorney and was in the courthouse this morning. Business colleagues, family members and Serena Williams, the tennis star. The jury is now being shown a “close contacts list” for Trump from early 2017. It includes Joe Scarborough, Tom Brady, Sean Hannity, Ari Emanuel, Bret Baier and Mark Burnett, the creator of "The Apprentice." Madeleine Westerhout has begun testifying about her frequent interactions with employees of the Trump Organization. She says she would pass their questions to Trump — who said that he had cut off his relationship with his business. This may seem innocent, but it’s important testimony, that really aids prosecutors’ case. It shows how seamless the transition between Trump’s public and private lives was. Information traveled through Westerhout and, on the other side, Rhona Graff, his assistant at the company, who we’ve already heard from as a witness. Westerhout testified that Trump would dictate tweets to her and would sometimes ask to review her work and make changes. She recalls that he liked to capitalize certain words like “country,” use exclamation points and was a fan of the Oxford comma. Westerhout is talking about Trump wanting “the girls” to put together a list of people he normally spoke to. “The girls” were the additional assistants who worked under Graff at Trump Tower, and that's how Trump — and then his underlings — referred to them for years. One thing that’s important to know about Madeleine Westerhout is that she is not a hostile witness at all. She resigned from the White House under difficult circumstances in 2019 after revealing personal details about the Trump family to reporters, but she has since signaled that she feels very warmly towards Trump, especially in her memoir about her White House experience. Trump himself has praised Westerhout and her book — signaling there is no longer bad blood between them. The morning’s testimony was from a porn star who spoke about having had sex with Trump, and described the lead-up to the encounter that she's discussed for years in extensive detail. Now, we are hearing a very staid description of the Oval Office and Trump’s work habits from his former assistant. This whiplash perfectly captures the experience of late 2016, as Trump was elected and was on his way to becoming president. But it also represents this duality that people experienced with Trump long before he went into politics — a public-facing side as a business leader, and a seamier one focused on the gossip pages and being seen with models. We just saw something really fun for those of us who have seen these prosecutors a couple of times. When Joshua Steinglass, one of the lead prosecutors here, doesn’t like the phrasing of one of his own questions, he tends to be self-deprecating, making fun of himself for how poorly the question was articulated. Rebecca Mangold, who is newer to the role but has questioned a lot of witnesses in this trial, just pulled the same trick, insulting herself for what she called a terrible question and rephrasing. Funny to see her pick up on that tactic — seems effective. Madeleine Westerhout has turned to describing Trump’s work habits. Rebecca Mangold, the prosecutor, asks if she developed an understanding of his preferences and Westerhout responds, “I hope so.” She then says that he preferred to either speak with people on the phone or meet with them in person. We expect that she will testify that one person she saw him meet with in person was Michael Cohen. If she testifies as prosecutors are hoping, she will say that happened in February 2017. Trump smiles and nods when Westerhout says he took “a lot” of calls during the day and late into the night. Trump has always seen his extensive phone chats as evidence he’s a hard worker. Westerhout is now explaining how Trump started working in a small dining room off the Oval Office, where he had any number of people visit him over the years. The prosecution has established for the jury that in 2017 Madeleine Westerhout was part of Trump's very small inner circle. We’ve got an hour left of testimony today, with the jury heading home at 4 p.m. And here's Ms. Westerhout: Madeleine Westerhout acknowledges that she knew Michael Cohen, the fixer who paid hush money to Stormy Daniels. She then starts talking about when she began to work in the White House. She says her boss asked her if she had any interest “in sitting outside the Oval Office.” Westerhout says she responded: “Yes, I do, that sounds like it would be a very cool job.” Rebecca Mangold, the prosecutor, is eliciting testimony that fundamentally makes this witness seem like an innocent. She keeps emphasizing that many of the experiences Westerhout is describing — including her testimony here today — were new for her. Prosecutors are using Westerhout to put into evidence a map of the first floor of the West Wing of the White House. This could become relevant when Michael Cohen testifies. He is expected to say he met with Trump in the Oval Office to discuss the arrangements that had been made to repay him for the hush money sent to Stormy Daniels. Rebecca Mangold, the prosecutor, asks Madeleine Westerhout whether she had a nickname in the press, and Westerhout acknowledges that she was known as “the greeter girl.” This is an interesting and somewhat odd note. I’m not sure what to make of it at the moment. I wonder whether it will become relevant in due time. Madeleine Westerhout is asked about the “Access Hollywood” tape, which has come up many times, on which Trump said that women would let him grope them because of his celebrity. She testifies that while at the Republican National Committe, she was privy to conversations about whether it was possible to replace Trump as the presidential nominee after the tape was released. Trump, who has never truly trusted the R.N.C. and has always been suspicious of the old-guard Republican establishment, watched Westerhout with intense interest as she described the organization's internal conversations after the release of the "Access Hollywood" tape. Madeleine Westerhout was one of Trump’s most trusted aides in the early White House years. She sat at a desk right outside the Oval Office and coordinated many of his calls, meetings and communications. She was a conduit to people on the outside and she was at Trump’s side through much of the day. She abruptly left the White House in the summer of 2019 after Trump learned that she had shared details about his family. She now works for Trump’s former national security adviser Robert O’Brien, who runs a geopolitical consultancy. The people have called Madeleine Westerhout to the stand. Westerhout was Trump’s executive assistant in the White House. She was fired after she spoke out of turn about the Trump family at an off-the-record dinner with reporters. Westerhout went on to write a book about her experiences, in which she extensively praised Trump. Prior to his presidency, she worked for the Republican National Committee. Trump is watching her, pursing his lips at times. He smirks when she says she is nervous to be here today. The prosecution is using an excerpt of the book to show that Trump is a micromanager in his business. In it, Trump says: “get the best people, and don’t trust them,” saying it's important to watch what they do closely. The witness is now reading a section in which Trump describes valuing “loyalty” more than anything. “We reward loyalty and everybody knows this.” In a potentially resonant excerpt, Trump writes: “This woman was very disloyal, and now I go out of my way to make her life miserable.” Another quote: “I used to say, go out and get the best people and trust them. Over the years, I have seen too many shenanigans, and now I say, get the best people and don’t trust them.” This emphasizes the theme of Trump as a micromanager, who wouldn’t let his employees handle major transactions without closely supervising them. However, Trump does say he might trust a loyal employee, such as Allen Weisselberg, whom he name checks specifically and who prosecutors say helped orchestrate the continuing concealment of the hush-money payments. The next excerpt also emphasizes Trump’s relish for revenge. “My motto is: always get even.” And another: “When you are wronged, go after those people because it’s a good feeling.” This book earned Trump royalties of $1.4 million, according to tax records that The Times obtained in 2020. Prosecutors' direct examination ended quickly, and Todd Blanche handled the brief cross-examination. He asked Menzies whether she was part of publishing this particular book. As we did in court on Tuesday, we are reviewing a book authored by Trump. This one is called “Think Big: Make it Happen in Business and Life.” The cover image, which was briefly displayed on the screen, showed Trump shouting. The witness, Tracey Menzies, says of the cover, “His name is quite large.” Trump is snoozing through this section of the testimony. The witness is being asked about Bill Zanker, with whom Trump wrote this book. Zanker is still in Trump’s orbit, having a role in the former president’s current sale of NFTs. Trump had a dinner related to NFTs at Mar-a-Lago last night. The cross-examination of Rebecca Manochio was extremely brief, and now we're hearing from a new witness, Tracey Menzies, who works at HarperCollins, a publishing company. We’ve already heard from another publishing executive, who read excerpts of two of Trump’s books aloud. We’re back in the courtroom, with about 10 minutes to go before we restart. If I understood correctly, the judge suggested that some of the issues that the defense lawyers wanted to address — including a renewed call for a mistrial — won’t be taken up until a little later this afternoon. Justice Merchan has indicated the jury will go home at 4 p.m. today, with defense motions considered after that.
  6. Most impressive. In less than a dozen posts, you've hit all the talking points. FYI, your boy Trump took the shot, too.
  7. Ah yes. Wrap yourself in a flag and let us know all about it.
  8. Stormy, Day 2 Stormy Daniels continued to insult Trump up until the end of her cross-examination, at one point even questioning which indictment of his Susan Necheles was referring to. She quipped: “There were a lot of indictments.” The defense moved it to strike that comment from the record, but the judge said no: he said Daniels’s testimony had been responsive to the questioning. The cross-examination has come to an end. Susan Necheles outright accused Stormy Daniels of lying about her story again. There was a sustained objection, and now, the lawyers are discussing the issue with the judge. The jury is back and so is Stormy Daniels, as Susan Necheles continues her cross-examination. She introduces a story about Daniels being at a nightclub with Trump and the football player Ben Roethlisberger. Daniels is still speaking quietly. Necheles quickly changes subjects, and asks about Daniels promoting her “Make America Horny Again” tour on her Instagram account. She’s still trying to catch Daniels in very small contradictions — Daniels had said she hated the tour name. Daniels is fighting back, but with a little less energy. We’re taking a short break. Stormy Daniels comes off the stand. She doesn’t look at Trump. Susan Necheles, for many minutes now, has sought to make Stormy Daniels look like she is lying about her sexual encounter with Trump. It’s worth remembering, at this moment, that the defense is not necessarily seeking to convince all of the jurors that Daniels is lying or that the sex didn’t happen. They only need to convince one of them. Still, Necheles remains in dangerous territory. “You’re trying to make me say it’s changed, but it hasn’t changed,” Daniels says of her story. Susan Necheles’s next line of questioning related to why Stormy Daniels said she felt a power imbalance with Trump before their sexual encounter. Necheles cuts Daniels off as she’s talking, prompting prosecutors to ask the judge to permit the witness to answer. Necheles pushes on the insinuation that Daniels is making up her feeling that Trump was overpowering her. Daniels gives perhaps her strongest testimony of the morning: “My own insecurities made me feel that way,” she says, her voice never wavering. Susan Necheles has reached the moment before the sexual encounter, and is seeking to question Daniels’s credibility about that account, mixing in descriptions of Daniels’s previous work in porn. Necheles notes that in Daniels’s book, she describes the early part of the encounter, writing that she made him her "bitch.” Necheles seeks to suggest there's an inconsistency here, because Daniels wrote about being aggressive with Trump but then testified that she was intimidated when he approached her for sex. Necheles is in extremely dangerous territory here: She could convince jurors that Daniels was inconsistent. But these jurors may also understand how complex these types of situations — and memories of them are. Necheles eventually cuts right to the point of her cross-examination about the sexual encounter: “You made all this up, right?” she asks. Daniels responds forcefully: “No.” “There was no more conversation,” Daniels says, about what happened after she left the bathroom, the moment at which she says the sexual encounter began. Susan Necheles, seeking to highlight inconsistencies in Stormy Daniels’s story, just landed on a spot where she was in fact consistent, and one that may stick in jurors’s minds. She was seeking to undercut Daniels's comment that Trump was watching television when she arrived at the hotel suite. But as she cites old evidence, Necheles informs us that Daniels mentioned years ago that Trump was wearing pajamas, one of the indelible details that Daniels also noted in Tuesday's testimony. Trump wearing pajamas seems like a more memorable detail than whether he was watching television. Susan Necheles spent many, many minutes drilling down on what Stormy Daniels meant when she said she and Trump had dinner but didn’t eat. It’s a pretty picayune distinction that the jurors can probably pick up on. It's starting to feel like Necheles is swinging a hammer over and over this minor semantic choice just for the sake of it. Part of the reason Necheles is even able to do this sort of minor parsing of words in the first place is because Daniels has now told her story in many places many different times, and invariably there will be slight alterations in each recounting. Defense lawyers love it when witnesses have given multiple accounts of the same event. Susan Necheles is addressing something that Stormy Daniels has long said, which is that she did not eat while in Trump’s hotel room in 2006 — presenting evidence that Daniels has at times described that episode as having been a “dinner.” It may seem minor but the defense is likely hoping to show the jurors that Daniels’s memory cannot be trusted in this description of something that happened just before she says she and Trump had sex. Daniels, though, is still fighting back, describing the encounter as a “dinner” but saying no food was ever served — which is why she’s always harped on the lack of food in interviews. Stormy Daniels, being quizzed extensively about whether she actually ate while in Trump's hotel room in 2006, prior to the alleged sexual encounter, smiles a bit. “It was dinner,” she says, “but we never got food.” She adds: “I’m very food-motivated.” This is mostly an attempt to confuse the jury about what Daniels has actually said. It’s certainly confusing for the press watching in the courtroom. The best witnesses have vivid recall of events and tell their stories consistently over time. Susan Necheles is homing in on any discrepancy she can find. Just to remind readers, as Susan Necheles continues to describe their encounter as a “supposed” meeting at a hotel, as she seeks to challenge Stormy Daniels’s story, we saw evidence on screen that Daniels had not just Trump’s bodyguard, Keith Schiller, listed in her phone, but his gatekeeper, Rhona Graff. Trump appears to be dozing as Susan Necheles questions Stormy Daniels at length about the details of her meeting with him. Stormy Daniels’s story of her sexual encounter with Trump is very nuanced and complex, and Daniels describes a lot of different types of motivations and a really conflicted approach to the whole episode. From the stand she sounded reluctant to go to dinner with Trump, and did so, in part, at the encouragement of her publicist. Susan Necheles, I think, is going to attack her mixed motivations directly, making her seem as if she was lying about how much she wanted to have dinner with Trump in 2006, and how she understood the encounter. Necheles is trying to point out an indiscrepancy by Daniels on a relatively small point — whether it was Trump or Trump's bodyguard who invited her to dinner. Daniels gets flustered, and the prosecution has an objection sustained. Daniels is beginning to sound upset as this questioning continues. Necheles is attacking Daniels’s account of the story, saying she described it differently in her book and at trial. This is a really tense moment for both witness and lawyer: Very easy for either of them to lose the sympathy of the jurors now. Susan Necheles, relying on Stormy Daniels’s book, begins to question her about what the defense lawyer calls “the supposed sexual encounter” that she says “supposedly occurred 18 years ago.” Daniels is fighting back on every mild mischaracterization on Necheles’s part — including where Trump’s bodyguard was at any given time — that she can. Now, Necheles begins to say that Daniels’s story of the sex has changed. Necheles continues to be derisive of Daniels’s sex work in her questioning. As she asks about the golf tournament where Daniels met Trump, she refers to “you and the other porn stars who were there.” The public perceptions around adult film and sex work have changed a lot in the last decade, and it’s unclear how the jury will perceive this back and forth. In a cable interview last year, Michael Cohen predicted that Stormy Daniels would do well if she testified against Trump, saying, “She’s very quick on her feet.” She seems to be showing that today, even if there is no way to know how jurors are receiving her. Stormy Daniels, very much playing on her home turf with these questions, holds her ground and seems utterly unshamed about her career in the sex trade. Trump is glowering, hunched over the defense table, as Daniels continues to insult him. Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanche can’t help but laugh when Daniels says she is “pretty sure we all know” how to have sex. An all-important exchange just now: Susan Necheles asks Stormy Daniels about her experience making porn films. “You have a lot of experience in making phony stories about sex appear to be real,” she says. Daniels responds: “That’s not how I would put it.” She is momentarily taken aback, and then adds, “The sex in the films is very much real, just like what happened to me in that room.” What jurors make of this — and of the accusation that pornography is akin to fabricating from whole cloth a sexual encounter — is incredibly important. Necheles is belittling Daniels's work in a way that is intended to suggest she is lying about having had sex with Trump. Daniels responds quickly to this particular line of questioning and has used at least one very memorable line: Necheles implies directly that she made up her story of sex with Trump. But if it weren’t true, Daniels replies, “I would have written it to be a lot better,” drawing laughter in the courtroom. Susan Necheles now brings up something that was inevitably going to be part of cross-examination: Stormy Daniels’s work as a medium. “You’ve made a show and a podcast claiming you can speak with dead people, right?” The goal is to make her seem unreliable as a narrator. Daniels tries to make a joke around one her paranormal interests, and the jurors don’t react. It’s a new angle from Necheles: portraying Daniels as crazy by bringing up her beliefs in the paranormal and communicating with dead people. So, to keep score, Necheles has now tried to discredit Daniels by suggesting she is crazy, dishonest, money-grubbing, desperate and fame-hungry. Trump is leaning forward and staring at the screen showing the exhibits of Stormy Daniels’s merchandise, including t-shirts and comic books. He is seemingly very interested in her efforts to make money off of the story of her affair with Trump. The jurors are paying close attention to the testimony this morning. When Stormy Daniels was on the stand for questioning from prosecutors, she made jokes a few times. The jurors didn’t react at all. She is engaging very differently today, continuing a combative series of exchanges with Susan Necheles, and jurors are looking back and forth between them. As we’ve said, it’s clear how the defense is seeking to cast Stormy Daniels. But the defense has carefully avoided, thus far, Daniels’s story of having had sex with Trump. That’s what Trump is accused of seeking to cover up, before the election through a hush-money payment and afterward, through what prosecutors say were disguised repayments to Michael Cohen. These accusations against Daniels may distract the jury — but they may not. Susan Necheles just noted that Stormy Daniels has “an online store where you sell merchandise,” accusing her of “shilling” online. Daniels responds: “Not unlike Mr. Trump.” Daniels smirks as she looks at celebratory tweets she sent on March 30, 2023, the day Trump was criminally indicted for the first time. She posted about drinking champagne and selling “Team Stormy” merchandise. This theme has been hit before but it’s worth noting that a defense lawyer for Donald Trump, one of the world’s great vendors of branded products, is trying to discredit Daniels for selling her “merch” in the wake of Trump’s indictment. So many of Stormy Daniels’s retorts are versions of “so did Trump.” He calls her “horseface,” so why can’t she call him an “orange turd”? He sells his merchandise, so why can’t she sell hers? Stormy Daniels is continuing to seek to avoid being caught in a contradiction, taking issue with Susan Necheles’s individual word choices. The defense posted a tweet in which Daniels called Trump an “orange turd,” and Daniels, several times, refused to say that she was talking about Trump. Eventually, Necheles said, “you don’t want to admit that you meant President Trump.” “Oh, I absolutely meant…Mr. Trump,” Daniels said, pausing to avoid calling the defendant “president” as his lawyers do. We saw Trump’s social media posts used against him repeatedly in this trial. The defense is focusing closely now on Daniels’s past statements. And given Michael Cohen’s own social media use, we can assume this is a preview of what we will see when he is cross-examined. It’s fascinating to watch Stormy Daniels take a page from the Trumpian playbook and say that she is allowed to punch back at social media jousts from her adversaries. If they want to make fun of me, then I can make fun of them, Daniels says as she explains why she responded to a tweet attacking her by calling Trump an “orange turd.” Necheles has been working hard to show the jury how much Daniels hates Trump and is prejudiced against him. She has cited numerous examples of Daniels mocking Trump using schoolyard insults. Watching Susan Necheles attempt to pull Stormy Daniels apart, I am reminded of a point we made in coverage about Trump not long ago. His goal is not to make people think he’s pure so much as his goal is to suggest his antagonists are all impure. Necheles takes an odd turn by trying to hammer Daniels for having a sexual relationship with a camera operator on her documentary. The defense’s playbook is very clear: Portray Daniels as a money-grubbing, sleazy, dishonest operator who tried to use Trump to get fame and riches from the anti-Trump resistance. Every aspect of her questioning hits at one of these themes. This is similar to the arguments used by Trump’s lawyers in his trial over E. Jean Carroll's defamation suit: that people who opposed Trump had perverse financial incentives. Susan Necheles has been relentless in painting Stormy Daniels as doing all of this — the N.D.A., the media appearances, her book, a strip club tour — to make money. There is, of course, a small irony in the fact that Trump himself has always lauded the pursuit of money, including writing a book called “How to Get Rich,” among others. Necheles has now brought up on screen an advertisement for an event from Daniels's strip club tour. The title: “Make America Horny Again.” Daniels claims that she “hated” that tagline. Stormy Daniels, at the beginning of cross, took issue with very small word choices Susan Necheles was making, including the idea that she had undergone “mock” cross-examination to prepare for this. Daniels took issue with the word mock. Here, in the early going, she’s also seeking to snipe at Necheles’s word choices, as she seeks to avoid losing a round to the defense lawyer, arguing about whether or not she did in fact accept money to keep silent and insisting she wanted her story out. But she’s in a tough spot: at the end of the day, she was paid nearly $100,000 after her representatives took their cuts and her story did not get out in 2016, when she was paid. Susan Necheles is pushing Stormy Daniels about how, by 2018, even though she had said she wouldn’t discuss this “supposed” story, she decided she wanted to “publicly” say she had sex with Trump. No, Daniels replies: “Nobody would ever want to” say that publicly. As a side note, Necheles is the most seasoned trial defense lawyer on the Trump team. But she has been literally pushed to the end of the table over and over by the lead lawyer on the case, Todd Blanche. She is demonstrating her experience in this format during this very high-stakes cross-examination. Necheles gets Daniels to confirm that her book contract — to sell her story — was valued at $800,000. She continues to frame this as a story of financial exploitation. The defense is now showing a statement that was released in January 2018, in which Daniels said that she did not have an affair with Trump. But Necheles did something clever, changing the wording to suggest she denied having sex with Trump — and Daniels agreed, not splitting hairs about the wording here. The Trump team has relied on this statement, which Daniels later rescinded, a lot — Trump posted on social as the trial was getting underway that the statement had been “JUST FOUND,” which led the judge to hold him in contempt for violating his gag order. Much of what has been discussed in cross-examination today is not new to the jury — the 2016 non-disclosure agreement, the 2018 denials by Daniels — whereas Tuesday’s testimony, with sometimes explicit mentions of the alleged sexual encounter, provided mostly new information. The jurors just heard an audio recording of Keith Davidson, Stormy Daniels’s former lawyer, telling Michael Cohen that she was desperate for the money and was panicked that her leverage to get it would disappear after the 2016 election because she expected Trump to lose. Davidson describes hearing Daniels say this to him on the phone, but Daniels denied it to the court shortly after the tape was played. The main goal of the defense’s questioning of Daniels this morning seems to be to establish for the jury that she was motivated by money above all else and won’t admit it. What’s interesting about this defense strategy is that Daniels is, of course, not on trial here. While the issue of her truthfulness about her motives in selling her story goes to the larger question of her credibility about things like, say, her sexual encounter with Trump, Trump’s own motives in seeking to silence Daniels’s story about that encounter are much more central to the charges in this case. Stormy Daniels is pushing back on Susan Necheles, taking little the lawyer says at face value. “Show me where I said that,” Daniels just said, forcing the defense to produce exhibits to back up their allegations. Necheles had pulled up the wrong transcript and audio snippet to try to illustrate that Daniels had called her lawyer weak-willed — she used another impolite term — in the negotiations over the 2016 deal with Michael Cohen. When the right tape and transcript is found, her voice is not on the tape; it is Cohen and Keith Davidson, her lawyer at the time. We are hearing that Stormy Daniels was in conversation with reporters — multiple reporters, including Jacob Weisberg of Slate, she says — about the possibility of selling her story before the election. And the defense is seeking to use that information to show that Daniels was using her story to threaten Trump. The defense, as it did with Keith Davidson, Daniels's former lawyer, is trying to paint Daniels as not only a liar, but as an extortionist, saying that she was telling Weisberg, that she either wanted money or she wanted to hurt Trump politically. Susan Necheles, Trump's lawyer, puts a finer point on it, saying “You were threatening to try to hurt” Trump “if he didn’t give you money.” “False,” Daniels replies. On Tuesday, Daniels said that she spoke with Weisberg during a period when her deal with Michael Cohen seemed like it would not go through. Today, she made a similar but finer point, saying the interview with Weisberg was almost like an insurance policy to make certain her story would get out if the non-disclosure agreement collapsed. Trump has now had his eyes closed for several minutes, with his chin jutting out. Susan Necheles asks Stormy Daniels why she talked to Jacob Weisberg, a Slate reporter, about her account, and then stopped. She implies that Daniels didn't go ahead with an interview because she wasn't going to be paid for it. Daniels is presenting as defiant on day two of her testimony, but more controlled. For example, instead of denying an accusation from Necheles outright, Daniels said: “I don’t know. Can you remind me?” This is an acknowledgment that Necheles might have evidence of what she’s talking about, namely Daniels seeking money from a journalist for her story. Susan Necheles, the defense lawyer, begins the questioning by saying that in 2011, Daniels denied having had sex with Trump. The prosecution objects and the judge instructs Daniels not to answer. Necheles moves on, saying that Daniels changed her account in 2016, when she was trying to sell her story. In past appearances I’ve seen Necheles ask questions she knows will prompt objections. She's aware, as are many courtroom veterans, that just because something is stricken from the record, it doesn’t mean the jury didn’t hear it. Indeed, sometimes jurors pay more attention then. Necheles presses Daniels, asking if she wanted money from Trump. “No,” Daniels says. “I never asked for money from anyone in particular, I asked for money to tell my story,” she says. “That’s what you were asking in 2016, was for money, to be able to tell your story?” Necheles pushes on. Daniels said on Tuesday that initially, she wasn’t interested in money. Necheles asks the obvious question. “That was your choice, right?” she says, of Daniels accepting money for silence. Daniels fights back, but says she accepted an offer” because she was “running out of time.” She's referring to the fact that the 2016 presidential election was quickly approaching. The people call Stormy Daniels back to the stand. We start, before the witness, with the prosecution asking that the defense be precluded from asking Stormy Daniels whether she was arrested. The judge agrees with the prosecutors, saying that “anybody can be arrested” and that it “doesn’t prove anything.” Trump addressed pool reporters and cameras in the hallways for 5 minutes before entering the courtroom. “I think you’ll see some very interesting things today,” Trump told them. The judge is on the bench and we are set to begin. Trump has entered the courtroom, wearing a navy jacket. Joining him today are Senator Rick Scott of Florida and Trump's friend Steve Witkoff, a real-estate investor. Trump is amiably chatting with Todd Blanche, one of his lawyers, who is laughing and smiling. The prosecutors have arrived, with their boxes of documents. Susan Hoffinger, who questioned Stormy Daniels, just removed a white binder from her bag. A very tense day for the prosecution coming up, as they begin the day seated, while cross-examination continues. I'll be curious to see how the defense approaches the ongoing cross-examination of Daniels today. Tuesday’s cross was combative in the extreme, with seemingly open hostility between the witness and Susan Necheles, who handled the questioning on behalf of Trump. Both Daniels and Necheles had yesterday off from court, and may have had time to reflect on their approaches to this high-stakes day. Good morning from the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse, where we are preparing for a second day of testimony from Stormy Daniels in Donald Trump’s criminal trial. She took the witness stand on Tuesday, and the testimony lived up to what is now her legal first name: It was tempestuous in the room, with an alternately anxious and defiant witness and what seemed to be a very angry former president. She testified about having had sex with him — an encounter he denies — and was confronted by the defense lawyers who sought to portray her as a liar during cross-examination. We’ll resume today at 9:30, with cross-examination set to continue. Given that reporters knew Daniels is coming back for more cross-examination, the waiting line for the press was longer than we’ve seen since the trial's opening statements. The line for the public was as long as I have seen it. A fellow near the front said he arrived at 3 a.m. to secure a seat to see the rest of Stormy Daniels’s testimony.
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  11. Stormy, Round 2: We’re expecting court to go until 4:30 today. But Susan Necheles, Trump's lawyer, tells Justice Merchan that she will continue cross-examining Stormy Daniels into Thursday. And Susan Hoffinger, the prosecutor, says she will question Daniels again during re-direct. So there will be much more. The jury is back in the courtroom and Daniels is on the stand. Trump told a group of pool reporters in the hallway that he thought the cross-examination was going “very well” as he walked back into the courtroom. During Stormy Daniels's cross-examination so far, Trump's lawyer has hardly asked her about the matter at the heart of the case — whether there was a conspiracy to cover up a hush-money payment made to a porn star, Daniels, before an election, and whether business records were falsified in the process. Trump's lawyer has instead focused on whether Daniels embellished her story about having been threatened in Las Vegas by someone supposedly connected to Trump. The lawyer, Susan Necheles, is seeking to attack Daniels's overall credibility. But Daniels told a very detailed story earlier in the morning about what she says was her sexual encounter with Trump, and it’s not clear how the jurors are processing what they're hearing right now, or whether it's affecting their views on Daniels. It has been an interesting follow-up to the dry testimony we heard on Monday, where the prosecutors walked us through the 34 invoices, checks and ledger entries that underpin the charges in this case. Susan Necheles is walking Stormy Daniels through specifics from her book and gets her to say that one thing she described in the book was incorrect. Daniels sticks to other parts of her story. One key moment was when Necheles, pushing Daniels about the threat she claims she encountered, challenged her about not telling her baby’s father about the alleged threat and implied it was made up. “Your daughter’s life was in jeopardy and you did not tell her father, right?” Necheles said. Daniels is becoming indignant as Necheles continues to cast doubt on her story that a man approached her in a parking lot and threatened her to stay silent about Trump. Necheles is now painting Daniels’ relationship with Cohen — she appeared on his podcast — in a sinister light. The question of whether Daniels was threatened in a parking lot has come up at other points in testimony from different witnesses. Keith Davidson, her former lawyer, cast some doubt on the story as he read his previous texts with Michael Cohen. Susan Necheles, Trump's lawyer, is trying to make Stormy Daniels look like a liar by bringing up her book excerpts, making it seem as if she has changed her story of having had sex with Trump. Daniels is fighting back and providing more context. The jurors are paying close attention and the courtroom is, to use the word of the day, tense. The courthouse overflow room is decidedly less tense. Members of the public have been laughing along at Daniels's responses. Susan Necheles tries something else, asking whether Stormy Daniels had talked to the lawyer Gloria Allred about potentially suing Trump. But again, Daniels fires back, saying that she also told Allred, “I had sex with Donald Trump.” Daniels seems to be locked in, and these questions don’t look to be going where Necheles expects. Prosecutors need Daniels to be consistent about having said she had sex with Trump. So far, she has been. A little context here: Much of Allred’s legal practice consists of representing women with claims — often sexual harassment or assault claims — against powerful men. Susan Necheles, Trump's lawyer, is moving on, saying that telling her story about having had sex with Trump has made Stormy Daniels a lot of money. Daniels hits back: “It has also cost me a lot of money.” Stormy Daniels just fended off the implication that Susan Necheles was seeking to make, which is that Daniels hopes that Trump will be convicted so she doesn’t have to pay his legal fees from the earlier defamation case. “I hope i dont have to pay him no matter what happens,” Daniels parried. Susan Necheles, Trump's lawyer, is trying to make Stormy Daniels look like a liar. But many of her questions have to do with money and Daniels is making it clear that she is not necessarily wealthy. So instead of this line of questioning working to impeach her credibility, as intended, it’s coming off as a lawyer for a very rich person going after someone with less money for having less money. Trump has massively overstated his own wealth over the years, but so much of the attention on that overlooks the fact that he still has more money than the vast majority of the country. Which is why this line of questioning is so fraught. It’s hard to know what effect this line of questioning will have on the jury. Trump’s lawyer, Susan Necheles, has successfully established that Stormy Daniels is refusing a court order to pay legal fees to Trump, which she was ordered to do six years ago after her defamation lawsuit against him was dismissed. But the jury knows that Trump is vastly wealthier than Daniels, so it is unclear how compelling they will find it that she has declined to give him money. We just witnessed something that felt like a grade school back-and-forth. Susan Necheles gets Stormy Daniels to acknowledge she had mocked Trump’s looks on Twitter, and Daniels replies, “Because he made fun of me first.” Necheles says that one of them started it, but “you both continued it.” Susan Necheles is continuing to push Stormy Daniels, who previously tweeted that she would not pay Trump “a penny” even after a federal court ordered her to cover his legal fees, as a result of a failed defamation lawsuit. A lawyer for Daniels has said that she does not, in fact, owe him any money. I'm curious to know how the jurors — whose finances are likely closer to Daniels's than Trump’s — will feel about Necheles's focus on money as a motivator for her actions, or inaction, as is the case in the court settlement against her that she has not paid. Once again, this is a cross-examination that doesn’t offer an alternative narrative about the heart of the case. This time, the focus is on Daniels’ refusal to pay Trump legal fees, aimed at damaging her credibility. When I’ve seen Susan Necheles, Trump's lawyer, in the past, she has dropped aggressive characterizations into her questioning, all but daring prosecutors to object. She did it just now, mentioning what she characterized as Stormy Daniels’s “frivolous litigation against President Trump.” Prosecutors objected, as could have been expected, and Necheles immediately had a more acceptable substitute phrase on hand, referring instead to Daniels’s lawsuits as “cases you brought that were dismissed.” This cross examination started at 11, to borrow a “Spinal Tap” reference, with aggressive questioning from Susan Nechles, and defiant answers from Stormy Daniels. Fighting from the stand can be tricky as a witness. You can win the jury to your side, but you can also be seen as petulant or needlessly aggressive. It’s a very fine line to walk. Stormy Daniels is definitely ready for a fight during this intense cross-examination, but given that we can’t know what the jury is thinking, we’ll never quite be able to tell how this back-and-forth is landing with them. Susan Necheles, Trump's lawyer, is now pushing Stormy Daniels on her desire for money. She says that Daniels went into pornography for money, and asks her, again, “You wanted more money, right?” “Don’t we all want to make more money in our jobs?” Daniels retorts. Then Necheles moves on to posts that Daniels made about wanting Trump to be imprisoned, including one saying that she would “dance down the street” if he was selected to go to jail. Daniels says “selected” was the wrong word because she knows a person is not selected to go to jail. Necheles asks Daniels: “Am I correct that you hate President Trump?” Daniels responds: “Yes.” Necheles continues: “And you want him to go to jail?” Daniels responds: “I want him to be held accountable.” Necheles is attempting to make Daniels look as if she is vindictive and seeking to damage Trump. The direct examination is over and here comes what is liable to be a very tense cross-examination by Susan Necheles, one of Trump's lawyers. It’s been calmer during the afternoon session thus far. But we expect that to be disrupted now. Daniels is sitting up straight and looks very ready for a fight here. As the lawyers approach for a sidebar, Stormy Daniels audibly asks the court reporter trancribing the proceedings, “Is that better?” It’s a reference to how quickly she talked this morning. The court reporter said that it was. A Trump post on Truth Social, in which he called Stormy Daniels “horseface,” is currently on the screens in the courtroom. It’s from March 2023, as the Manhattan district attorney's office was preparing to indict Trump in this case. Trump insists he hasn’t seen Daniels since encountering her on a golf course and taking a picture with her 18 years ago. Daniels is now reading the Truth post aloud. Trump has long denied Daniels’s story. But now the jury is being asked to weigh his words against hers directly, as she reads his social media post, in which he says he hasn’t seen her since the golf course she described earlier. He also denies having had sex with her. Daniels testified otherwise this morning. Right now, she is reading aloud, rattling off the insults Trump uses for her, including “horseface” and “sleaze bag.” And she says the post is false, as Trump sits quietly at the defense table. Susan Hoffinger, the prosecutor, asks Daniels who she understands Trump to have been calling “horseface.” “Me,” she replies. The same goes for “sleaze bag,” which he also called her in the post. Hoffinger is teasing out from Daniels that his statement that their only interaction was on that golf course is “false.” Jurors heard last week from Trump’s former executive assistant, Rhona Graff, that Stormy Daniels showed up at Trump Tower in 2007, months after the golf course event, which he said was the only time he saw her. Susan Hoffinger is walking Daniels, and by extension the jury, through some issues that are certain to come up in cross-examination: namely, her appearance on Michael Cohen’s podcast. Stormy Daniels is saying her lawyer, Michael Avenatti, filed a defamation claim against Trump against her wishes. She says she wished he had not done so because she felt it was too risky. (Avenatti, a risk-taker by nature, was sentenced to prison in 2022 for stealing from Daniels.) Justice Merchan, who seemed to get upset several times during the morning session, seems more measured this afternoon, parsing out decisions in a calm montone. That may have something to do with Stormy Daniels herself, who has kept many of her answers brief. As Stormy Daniels was testifying about her defamation claim against Trump, the former president appeared for a while to be solidly asleep. Some of the jurors, while Trump rests, are taking detailed notes on Daniels’s testimony. Stormy Daniels testifies that it was upsetting to her to hear Michael Cohen talking about the story in public, “because he could talk about it and i couldn’t.” She then testifies that Cohen filed a temporary restraining order against her, seeking to keep her from speaking. And around that time, she says, she hired another lawyer: Michael Avenatti. Daniels is now walking through the portion of the story where Cohen tried to make her adhere to the non-disclosure agreement, while, she says, he was talking about the case to people. She hired Avenatti to get her out of the N.D.A. and she told her story to Anderson Cooper on "60 Minutes." Trump is sitting still with his eyes closed. Stormy Daniels says that once her story became public, her life exploded into “chaos — suddenly I was front and foremost everywhere,” she says. She says that the story “blew her cover,” to an extent, making her more public than she had been before. She starts to go on but the judge cuts her off and the testimony moves along, again. Daniels has previously talked about the “chaos” that ensued after her allegations about Trump were made public. She has told reporters she was inundated by threats by Trump supporters, many of which were lurid and graphic. And she’s said she feared for her family's safety. This really is like experiencing a different witness than we did this morning. Stormy Daniels is now being asked about a statement she signed denying having had an affair with Trump, dated Jan. 10, 2018. This is the same statement that Trump recently posted on Truth Social had been "JUST FOUND." After a morning filled with often uncomfortable testimony and graphic detail on a sexual tryst, the early direct examination this afternoon is considerably less dramatic. Prosecutors are leaning on documents, which may have the added benefit, for them, of limiting Daniels’ more freewheeling comments. Daniels makes it clear that she didn’t want to sign the statement, and that it wasn’t true. Todd Blanche struggled to defend the post last week in a contempt hearing related to Trump's gag order. The statement clearly had not just been found. Stormy Daniels, referring to a Wall Street Journal article that mentioned her while discussing another hush-money deal, says she did not comment for the article, honoring the terms of the deal she had reached through her lawyer, Keith Davidson. She’s very different — and so far, more helpful to prosecutors — in this afternoon session. I imagine jurors will notice the difference, and they may wonder about it. It’s so odd to be a juror. You’re the decider, but so much goes on that you’re not allowed to see. Stormy Daniels glanced toward the back of Trump's head as she was led into the courtroom. She’s now seated, and we’re waiting for the jury to return. Daniels has begun to testify again. It’s clear that the prosecutor, Susan Hoffinger, asked her behind closed doors to start giving shorter answers. She is sticking far more closely to the questions being asked, and her testimony — about the hush-money deal — is speeding along. She just testified that her lawyer, Keith Davidson, received $130,000. After he and her manager took fees, she ended up with about $96,000, she says. The conferencing is over, but Justice Merchan says that, with the consent of the defense lawyers, Susan Hoffinger, the prosecutor, has stepped out to confer with Stormy Daniels about keeping her testimony within the confines set by the judge, and avoiding any “unnecessary” details. The defense argued that certain testimony from Daniels was out of bounds: Her claim that Trump had not worn a condom, and her recounting of her specific feelings about the encounter — whether or not there was consent and whether she had been put in danger. These are some of the points, I believe, that the judge advised defense lawyers to deal with when they question Daniels themselves. After the judge in his civil fraud trial refused to move for an immediate, favorable verdict after lawyers there called for a mistrial, Trump stormed out of the room. The stakes are higher in this case, with a jury present and a prison sentence on the table. But this is the type of development that has really bothered Trump in the past. To that end, this is as angry as Trump has appeared all day — more so than at any point during Stormy Daniels’ testimony. He shook his head and glowered when the judge said a mistrial was not warranted. The judge has declined to declare a mistrial. While he acknowledged that some of the evidence that came in was more than he would have liked — “better left unsaid,” is how he put it several times — he takes as much issue with the defense as with the prosecution. This must come as a major relief for prosecutors. And I can imagine that they might wish the jury was in the room right now. Justice Merchan reminds the defense that “the remedy is on cross-examination,” meaning that the defense will be able to make its own case as it questions Stormy Daniels. After Merchan earlier seemed to side with the defense, this is not a great start for Trump’s team in the afternoon. Justice Merchan says he’ll rule now. He says he agrees that it would have been better if Stormy Daniels hadn't gone in certain directions, and says as a witness she is “a little bit difficult to control.” He adds, “Having said that, I do think” that there were “guardrails in place.” He adds that he doesn’t believe we are at the point where a mistrial is warranted. Merchan adds, “I was surprised that there were not more objections,” admonishing the defense team. “The defense has to take some responsibility for that,” he says, adding that he did all he could. “I objected on my own,” he says. Susan Necheles, Trump's lawyer, says that the defense team had moved to strike so much of this beforehand and Justice Merchan still let it in. The judge bristles at the statement. Challenging Stormy Daniels’s credibility has always been central for the defense, and Todd Blanche makes clear some of the ways in which they plan to do that as they argue for a mistrial. Todd Blanche is done and Susan Hoffinger stands up. She says that Daniels's story is important story for motive and intent, to illustrate what the defendant, Trump, didn’t want the public to know before the election. This doubles as a chance for Hoffinger to explain to the press — sitting behind her in the courtroom, even as the jurors remain absent — why the prosecution felt Daniels’s testimony was important. Hoffinger says that “we were extremely mindful of not eliciting too much testimony about the actual act.” Given Justice Merchan’s strong reaction to that testimony, I’m very curious to hear his response to that. He appears to be taking notes as Hoffinger speaks. Among the issues that Todd Blanche, Trump's lawyer, brings up as he calls for a mistrial is Stormy Daniels’s testimony that Trump didn’t wear a condom. He argues that this testimony was deeply prejudicial to his client — and asked what the jury is supposed to do with much of the information they received from Daniels’ testimony. This is a Hail Mary for Blanche, but his arguments are substantive. As Blanche continues to speak, Justice Merchan gazes at him, impassive, not giving anything away. The judge’s left pointer finger is covering his upper lip, as it often does when he is listening closely. The judge is on the bench. The defense is moving for a mistrial. This is not unusual for Trump's lawyers — in his civil fraud trial, his lawyers asked that a mistrial be called several times. They were unsuccessful. Todd Blanche, one of Trump's lawyers, argues that the testimony was overly prejudicial, and that the government was asking questions “to inflame this jury,” in addition to the “pure embarrassment” factor. He says there’s no way the court can instruct the jury in a way to “unring this bell.” It would be a surprise for Justice Merchan to agree to a mistrial. But he also signaled displeasure with how the testimony was going several times this morning, sustaining multiple objections. The judge was very unhappy with this morning’s testimony and Blanche is objecting to specific details. It’s not totally unreasonable to think we could see some scolding from the judge here. Stormy Daniels’s testimony brings up an interesting question about what the public knows to be true at this point and what is still unproven. For example: It is an established fact that Daniels was paid $130,000 in hush money to keep silent about her story of having had sex with Trump. Michael Cohen paid her and was repaid, including with checks that were signed by Trump. But various aspects of the story are not established fact: Trump denies that they had sex, and his lawyers have said different things about why exactly Cohen was repaid. So even as the jurors seek to determine whether Trump is guilty of falsifying business records, there are plenty of matters they’ll have to wade through in which the truth is far from settled. We’re about to begin the afternoon session of testimony from Stormy Daniels, who is being questioned by one of the prosecutors, Susan Hoffinger. Under questioning, Daniels has given prosecutors key pieces of information that they need, such as describing a sexual encounter with Trump and their interactions afterward. And she testified that that was the story she would have told in 2016, had she not entered into a hush-money agreement with Trump through his fixer, Michael Cohen. At the same time, Daniels’ testimony was incredibly uncomfortable at various points — sometimes lurid in detail — and she repeatedly went further than the judge wanted her to, prompting him to curtly tell her, at least twice, to stick to the question. Daniels also mocked Trump several times, in ways that felt discordant to the story she was telling. Jurors watch judges closely, and it’s not at all clear how these jurors interpreted either Justice Merchan’s handling of the witness, or her presentation on the stand so far.
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