Stormy Daniels Delivers Intense Testimony
A long day on the stand put Ms. Daniels’s credibility to the test as defense lawyers challenged her motives.
“The people call Stormy Daniels.”
So began the intense and often uncomfortable testimony of Ms. Daniels, who spent almost five hours in a Manhattan courtroom on Tuesday recounting her story of a 2006 encounter with Donald J. Trump and the ensuing hush-money cover-up that has become the bedrock of the prosecution’s case.
Ms. Daniels spoke quickly and at length about her first meeting with Mr. Trump at a celebrity golf tournament near Lake Tahoe in Nevada.
After the lunch break, Mr. Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanche moved for a mistrial, arguing that the prosecution’s questions had been designed to embarrass Mr. Trump and prejudice the jury.
The judge, Justice Juan M. Merchan of State Supreme Court, agreed that some of Ms. Daniels’s testimony might have “been better left unsaid,” but he denied a mistrial.