All eyes are on porn actor Stormy Daniels, who took the stand in Donald Trump’s trial Tuesday and recounted the lead-up to meeting Trump and a 2006 sexual encounter she has said the two engaged in. Trump denies the encounter took place.


NEW YORK (AP) — With Donald Trump sitting just feet away, Stormy Daniels testified Tuesday at the former president’s hush money trial about a sexual encounter the porn actor says they had in 2006 that resulted in her being paid to keep silent during the presidential race 10 years later.
Jurors appeared riveted as Daniels offered a detailed and at times graphic account of the encounter Trump has denied. 

Trump stared straight ahead when Daniels entered the courtroom, later whispering to his lawyers and shaking his head as she testified.

Trump is the first ex-president on criminal trial. Here’s what to know about the hush money case.
Trump is facing four criminal indictments, and a civil lawsuit. You can track all of the cases here.
The testimony was by far the most-awaited spectacle in a trial that has toggled between tabloidesque elements and dry record-keeping details. A courtroom appearance by a porn actor who says she had an intimate encounter with a former American president added to the long list of historic firsts in a landmark case laden with claims of sex, payoffs and cover-ups and unfolding as the presumptive Republican nominee makes another bid for the White House.
Daniels veered into salacious details despite the repeated objections of defense lawyers, who demanded a mistrial over what they said were prejudicial and irrelevant comments.
“This is the kind of testimony that makes it impossible to come back from,” attorney Todd Blanche said. “How can we come back from this in a way that’s fair to President Trump?”
The judge rejected the request and said defense lawyers should have raised more objections during the testimony. The Trump team later in the day used its opportunity to question Daniels to paint her as motivated by personal animus and profiting off her claims against Trump.
“Am I correct that you hate President Trump?” defense lawyer Susan Necheles asked Daniels.

“Yes,” she acknowledged.

Daniels’ statements are central to the case because in the final weeks of Trump’s 2016 Republican presidential campaign, his then-lawyer and personal fixer, Michael Cohen, paid her $130,000 to keep quiet about what she says was an awkward and unexpected sexual encounter with Trump in July 2006 at a celebrity golf outing in Lake Tahoe. Trump has pleaded not guilty.