Stormy Daniels, the former adult film star at the centre of Donald Trump's hush money trial, has concluded her testimony, fending off an effort to undermine her credibility as a witness in the first criminal trial of a sitting or former US president.
Ms Daniels spent roughly seven-and-a-half hours on the stand over two days where she recounted, among other things, the alleged 2006 sexual encounter with the former president that she was eventually paid to keep quiet about during the 2016 presidential election.
On the second day of the cross-examination, Mr Trump's attorneys aggressively sought to poke holes in Ms Daniels's credibility, accusing her of trying to extort him, rehearsing her testimony and changing her story over the years — all things she forcefully denied.
At the end of the day, the judge denied a request to loosen a gag order on Mr Trump's public comments and a second motion to declare a mistrial.
'You made all this up, right?'
Mr Trump's lawyers sought to paint Ms Daniels as a liar and extortionist who was trying to take down Mr Trump after drawing money and fame from her story about him.
They say the hush money payments were an effort to protect his reputation and family — not his campaign — by shielding them from embarrassing stories about his personal life.
Defence lawyer Susan Necheles on Thursday questioned Ms Daniels over what she said were inconsistencies in her description of the encounter with Mr Trump in a hotel room.
"The details of your story keep changing, right?" Ms Necheles asked at one point.
"No," Ms Daniels shot back.
As the jury looked on, the two women traded barbs.
"You made all this up, right?" Ms Necheles asked.
"No," Ms Daniels said emphatically, sitting with her hands folded and legs crossed.
She stuck to her account of the alleged encounter.
"You're trying to make me say that it changed, but it hasn't changed."
Mr Trump denies the whole story ever took place.
He scowled and shook his head through much of Ms Daniels's description over the two days, including how she found him sitting on the hotel bed in his underwear after she returned from the bathroom and that he did not use a condom.
At one point on Tuesday, the judge told defence lawyers during a sidebar conversation — out of earshot of the jury and the public — that he could hear Mr Trump "cursing audibly".
Ms Daniels testified earlier this week that while she was not physically menaced, she felt a "power imbalance" as Trump, in his hotel bedroom, stood between her and the door and propositioned her.
As for whether she felt compelled to have sex with him, she reiterated on Thursday that he did not drug her or physically threaten her. But, she said, "My own insecurities, in that moment, kept me from saying no."
Ms Necheles suggested that her work in porn meant her story about being shocked and frightened by Mr Trump's alleged sexual advances was not believable.
"You've acted and had sex in over 200 porn movies, right?" Ms Necheles asked.
"And there are naked men and women having sex, including yourself, in those movies?"
Necheles continued: "But according to you, seeing a man sitting on a bed in a T-shirt and boxers was so upsetting that you got light-headed. The blood left your hands and feet, and you felt like you were going to faint."
The experience with Mr Trump was different from porn for a number of reasons, Ms Daniels explained, including the fact that he was more than twice her age, larger than her and that she was not expecting to find him undressed when she emerged from the bathroom.
"I came out of a bathroom seeing an older man that I wasn't expecting to be there," she said.
Ms Necheles pressed her on why she accepted the payout to keep quiet instead of going public.
"Why didn't you do that?" she asked, wondering why Ms Daniels did not hold a news conference as she had planned.
"Because we were running out of time," Ms Daniels said.
Did she mean, Ms Necheles asked, that she was running out of time to use the claim to make money?
"To get the story out," Ms Daniels countered.
The negotiations were happening in the final weeks of the 2016 presidential campaign.
While she was in talks with Mr Trump's former lawyer, Michael Cohen, Ms Daniels was also talking with other journalists as a "backup" plan, she testified.
Ms Necheles accused her of refusing to share the story with reporters because she would not have been paid for it.
"The better alternative was for you to get money, right?" Ms Necheles said.
Ms Daniels said she was most interested in getting her story out and ensuring her family's safety.
"The better alternative was to get my story protected with a paper trail so that my family didn't get hurt," Ms Daniels replied.
But she testified that she never spoke with Mr Trump about payment, and said she had no knowledge of whether he was aware of or involved in the transaction.
"You have no personal knowledge about his involvement in that transaction or what he did or didn't do," Ms Necheles asked.
"Not directly, no," Ms Daniels responded.
Just before ending the cross-examination, Ms Necheles asked Ms Daniels if she had knowledge of Mr Trump's business records — part of an effort to paint her testimony as irrelevant to the false business records charges at hand.
"I know nothing about his business records, no," Ms Daniels said. "Why would I?"
Prosecutor Susan Hoffinger later asked Ms Daniels if she was telling the truth.
"Have you been telling lies about Mr Trump or the truth about Mr Trump?" she said.
"The truth," said Daniels.
"On balance, has publicly telling the truth about Mr Trump been a net positive or net negative in your life?" Ms Hoffinger asked.
"Negative," Ms Daniels replied quietly.
She said that although she has made money since her story emerged, she also has had to spend a lot to hire security, move homes and take other precautions, and she still owes Mr Trump hundreds of thousands of dollars in attorney fees.
Gag order remains in place, no mistrial
After testimony ended on Thursday, Mr Trump's lawyer Todd Blanche once again asked Justice Juan Merchan to declare a mistrial on the basis of Ms Daniels's testimony.
He argued that her detailed testimony about the alleged sexual encounter had veered into territory that was irrelevant to the case and would prejudice jurors against Mr Trump.
"This is not a case about sex," Mr Blanche said. "This is not a case about whether that incident took place or didn't take place."
He also alleged that prosecutors elicited a level of detail that went far beyond what was agreed to.
"You have jurors who are now hearing about an imbalance of power between a man and a woman, none of that is information that goes to motive in this case," Mr Blanche said
"We didn't know these questions were coming. We didn't know."
Judge Merchan denied the request, saying that because Mr Blanche had argued in his opening statement on April 22 that the encounter never happened, prosecutors were allowed to try to rehabilitate Ms Daniels's credibility.
"Your denial puts the jury in a position of having to choose who they believe," Judge Merchan said.
He also reiterated that they could have objected to unwanted questions, in particular, about whether Mr Trump used a condom, which led to Ms Daniels's response that he had not.
"I agree. That should never have come out. That question should never have been asked and that answer should never have been given," Judge Merchan said.
"For the life of me, I don't know why Ms Necheles didn't object."
The judge also denied a similar request on Tuesday.
In addition, Mr Blanche requested that a gag order restricting Mr Trump's public comments about jurors and witnesses be loosened to let the defendant publicly respond to questions about Ms Daniels's testimony.
Judge Merchan also denied that request, stating that other witnesses may see Mr Trump's comments and become concerned that he would say similar things about them.
"My concern is not just with protecting Ms Daniels or a witness who has already testified. My concern is with protecting the integrity of these proceedings as a whole," he said.
Christopher Conroy, a prosecutor, suggested that the proper way for Mr Trump to respond to Ms Daniels would be to testify in his own defence.
Mr Trump before the trial told reporters he would testify, though it remains to be seen whether he will do so.
"There is a proceeding here that this (gag) order is designed to protect," Mr Conroy said.
"If somebody wants to respond to something that's said in this room, that can happen in this room."
The judge has fined Mr Trump $US10,000 ($15,110) for running afoul of the gag order 10 times, and said further violations could land him in jail.
Meanwhile, his attorneys are fighting the order and seeking a fast decision in an appeals court. If the court refuses to lift it, they want permission to take their appeal to the state's high court.
Mr Trump fumed outside the courtroom at the end of the day.
"I'm innocent," he said. "I'm being held in this court with a corrupt judge who's totally conflicted."
He also railed against the judge for denying the attorneys' requests.
"This judge, what he did, and what his ruling was, is a disgrace," Mr Trump said. "Everybody saw what happened today."
The real reason for the trial
Despite Ms Daniels's at-times discomfiting testimony, the case against Mr Trump does not hinge on whether her account is true or even believable.
The trial is about money changing hands — business transactions — and whether those payments were made to illegally influence the 2016 election.
Mr Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsifying internal Trump Organization business records.
The charges stem from paperwork such as invoices and checks that were deemed legal expenses in company records.
Prosecutors say those payments largely were reimbursements to Mr Trump's attorney, Michael Cohen, who paid Ms Daniels $US130,000 to keep quiet.
Cohen pleaded guilty and went to jail for his role in the operation.
Prosecutors have said Mr Trump's efforts to obscure the paper trail for the payment to Ms Daniels corrupted the 2016 election in which he defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton, by preventing voters from learning about a story that might have swayed their vote.
The testimony over the past three weeks has seesawed between bookkeepers and bankers relaying the nuts and bolts of check-paying procedures and wire transfers to unflattering, seamy stories about Mr Trump and the tabloid world machinations meant to keep them secret.
This criminal case could be the only one against the presumptive Republican presidential nominee to go to trial before voters decide in November whether to send him back to the White House.
Mr Trump has pleaded not guilty and casts himself as the victim of a politically tainted justice system working to deny him another term.
At the time of the payment to Ms Daniels, Mr Trump and his campaign were reeling from the October 2016 publication of the never-before-seen 2005 "Access Hollywood" footage in which he boasted about grabbing women's genitals without their permission.
Prosecutors have argued that the political firestorm over the "Access Hollywood" tape hastened Cohen's payment to keep Daniels from going public with her claims that could further hurt Mr Trump in the eyes of female voters.
The tape rattled RNC leadership, and "there were conversations about how it would be possible to replace him as the candidate if it came to that," according to testimony from Madeleine Westerhout, a Trump aide who was working at the Republican National Committee when the recording leaked.
Ms Westerhout took the witness stand again on Thursday afternoon and told jurors about checks he signed while in office. She is expected to return to the witness stand on Friday.
AP/Reuters/ABC
