Francisco 2.0

The original story: https://weartv.com/news/local/milton-man-charged-with-holding-uber-driver-at-gunpoint-after-female-drop-off And now, the dad is giving his version of the story: https://www.weartv.com/news/local/milton-dad-accomplished-veteran-tells-his-side-in-uber-driver-gun-case-involving-daughter

....for Montblanc. And he's the main character. And designs his own pen in the process: https://www.voguebusiness.com/story/fashion/montblanc-asked-wes-anderson-to-direct-its-ad-he-offered-a-pen-design

Edit: All vehicles have some sort of issue. But jeezus, the amount of different issues this piece of shit has is unreal. For shits and grins, check out the subforum https://www.cybertruckownersclub.com/forum/forums/issues-repairs-warranty-recalls.66/ https://www.cybertruckownersclub.com/forum/threads/35-miles-until-a-problem-now-resolved.16878/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/09/trump-oil-industry-campaign-money/

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.

https://jalopnik.com/watch-brain-geniuses-get-arrested-for-refusing-to-answe-1851466410

Oh, let us count the ways.

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.

Most impressive. In less than a dozen posts, you've hit all the talking points. FYI, your boy Trump took the shot, too.

Ah yes. Wrap yourself in a flag and let us know all about it.

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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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.

Break over, back to Stormy: We are breaking for lunch after a remarkable morning of testimony — often choppy and sometimes discordant — from Stormy Daniels, who described in great detail the sexual encounter in 2006 that lies at the heart of the case, and that Trump has denied ever took place. Daniels has left the courtroom. Her testimony was tense and very interesting — and it's really hard to know what the jury will make of it. We noted early today that we weren’t exactly sure why prosecutors had called her and I’m still not sure I know the answer to that question. She testified about the sex at the heart of the deal, which, again, Trump denies. But her demeanor — her rushed testimony and the judge eventually chastising her — may not land well with jurors. And the defense hasn’t even started questioning her yet. Stormy Daniels is laying out the specifics of the hush money deal — a really important part of her testimony, after a lot of details that were difficult to follow, as she skipped through meetings and dates and years as the prosecution guided her toward 2016. She said that if she were to violate the agreement, it would cost her a million dollars every time she did so. Daniels said she was not paid on time, and that in 2016, she wasn’t sure why. “He just kept making excuses,” she said. At first she clarified that the “he” in question was Michael Cohen, who paid the hush money. But then she changed her answer and testified that it was “Trump” who delayed the payment — more specifically, Trump speaking to Cohen, who was speaking to her then-lawyer Keith Davidson. That was an interesting moment, almost as if Daniels was trying to make the prosecution’s case for them. Stormy Daniels is testifying that she was not motivated by money, and says she didn’t negotiate the hush-money deal because she didn’t care about the figure. The hush money is at the heart of the case, and she was eventually paid $130,000. I can imagine it being very hard for jurors to accept that Daniels did not want money. The testimony by Stormy Daniels that she did not care about money might be undercut by text messages I’ve reviewed personally between her agent at the time, Gina Rodriguez, and the editor of The National Enquirer, which looked something like an auction, with the two of them bidding back and forth until they got to $120,000. The Enquirer’s publisher would not pay, which is how Michael Cohen ended up taking over the deal. Susan Necheles, the defense lawyer, has lodged objection after objection. Objections are meant to either cut off testimony or have it stricken from the official record entirely. We can’t tell you exactly what her rate of success has been, but it’s way higher than normal. The judge is accepting her objections and disrupting Stormy Daniels’s testimony. Daniels is asked whether the story she’s told here today about her encounter with Trump is one she would have described to news outlets had she been interviewed then. But the defense objects to the question and the judge sustains it again — Daniels does not answer. Stormy Daniels is now talking about an article posted on the website The Dirty in 2011 about her encounter with Trump. The jurors have already heard from other witnesses about this article, which Daniels said she wanted taken down. For context, when this issue came up in 2011, Trump was making noises about running for president in the 2012 Republican primary. He had been promoting a lie about President Obama’s birthplace, suggesting Obama was an illegitimate president, and was gaining traction in polls as he did. The testimony we’ve heard so far firmly puts Stormy Daniels in Trump’s orbit during a sustained period of time. Trump has continued to motion to his lawyer Susan Necheles, who likely will be handling the cross-examination and has been taking notes throughout Daniels's testimony. Stormy Daniels is now being asked about being threatened in a parking lot by someone while she was in Las Vegas with her daughter. Her voice shakes as she talks about it, and explains she didn’t report it because it would have been upsetting to the person she was in a relationship with at the time. This is an account she never told some of the people who worked closely with her on the hush-money deal. She first revealed it in a "60 Minutes" interview in 2018, after hiring her now-jailed former lawyer, Michael Avenatti. Trump has claimed he had nothing to do with Stormy Daniels, just as he has nothing to do with any of the women who’ve made claims against him. But the cumulative testimony extracted from this line of questioning is that Stormy Daniels met with Trump on multiple occasions, with dozens of witnesses. Daniels also describes multiple phone calls with Trump — some of which had witnesses because Daniels says she put Trump on speaker phone for sport while her friends were present. The jury has also been shown phone contact logs from Daniels’s phone and from Trump’s assistant’s phone. The jurors, who have listened closely to past witnesses and looked back and forth between witnesses and prosecutors as they’ve asked questions, have appeared to be less focused on Daniels during her testimony. Some are looking down, some are looking away. Again, impossible to know what it means, but it’s something different. Stormy Daniels is now testifying about meeting with Trump at Trump Tower in 2007. She says she was greeted warmly, and although the meeting was brief, he introduced her to everybody, and at one point they took selfies. Daniels says that another 2007 meeting, in Los Angeles, was the last time she saw Trump in person — before today, presumably — and that he in no way stressed that she should keep their encounter secret. This small bit of testimony could be useful to the prosecution because it will allow them to argue that Trump changed his mind and wanted the encounter to remain under wraps once he was running for president. Justice Merchan scolded Stormy Daniels for going off topic and told her to “just answer the questions,” a notable sign of disapproval from a judge who has largely been even-keeled, particularly with the prosecution. Merchan sustains a defense objection. Susan Hoffinger, the prosecutor, objects, saying that Daniels’s answer was directly responsive to her question. Then, the judge again scolds Daniels, telling her again to keep her answers short and to the point. He then reverses himself and overrules the objection. We’ve rarely seen Merchan this openly annoyed — and when we do, he often seems to work to rein himself in after the fact. Merchan's visible disapproval may be bad news for the prosecution. Jurors often take their cues from judges. If the judge seems impatient with a witness, jurors could receive it almost as permission to feel the same way. Stormy Daniels continues to walk the prosecutors through the encounter. She says Trump didn’t wear a condom. “Did you say anything about it?” Susan Hoffinger, the prosecutor, asks. “No,” Daniels replies, adding, when asked why not, “I didn’t say anything at all.” She describes it as brief, and repeats that she did not say no at any point. “I didn’t say anything at all,” she says again. Daniels is testifying about a few details that corroborate her story, including who she talked to about the initial encounter, as well as further discussions with Trump, who called her “honeybunch.” Stormy Daniels describes herself being traumatized by the encounter: shaking, bewildered, wondering “how I got” to the place of having sex with Trump. But she says she didn’t say no, “because I didnt say anything at all.” Daniels says that while she didn't object in the moment, she also didn’t enjoy it, and that she felt there was an “imbalance” in the power dynamic between the two. It’s worth noting that the ominous overtones of Stormy Daniels’s testimony her sexual encounter with Trump were not present in early versions of this story she has told. In her 2011 interview, she did not mention blacking out and described it much more casually than she is doing now. Experts on traumatic sexual experiences say that a person's perception of such encounters can change over time, and that the most traumatic details may only emerge later. In recent years, her narrative has evolved. In the documentary “Stormy” that aired on Peacock in March, she referred to the power imbalance she has described today, saying: “I was nine years old again.” She said she could have fought Trump off, but said to herself, “I’m not supposed to act like that. There’s that whole dynamic because I was from the South that he was an elder and a man, and I was taught to show respect and be a good girl.” The defense has been objecting to many questions and the judge has been sustaining a lot of them. He is not happy about this testimony. As we see how explicit this becomes, it's worth remembering the following: This is relevant testimony, given that this encounter is at the heart of the prosecution's case. But it also may be a risk for prosecutors. It’s very hard to know what jurors will make of it all. Clearly prosecutors want Daniels to confirm the sexual encounter that underpins the entire narrative of Trump seeking to pay her off, keep her quiet and ultimately covering up the nature of the payment. But the risk they run in eliciting such intimate details from Daniels is that the testimony backfires and the jury develops some sympathy for Trump. Susan Hoffinger, the prosecutor, is now asking Stormy Daniels about having had sex with Trump, which Trump denies. “Did you at some point end up on the bed having sex with him?” Hoffinger asks. Daniels says yes. When she describes the position they were in, the defense objects, and the objection is sustained. Trump is watching Daniels as she talks about the sexual encounter. At one point, he motioned to his lawyer, who then objected. Trump’s son Eric is sitting directly behind him in court, staring straight ahead as Stormy Daniels describes the sexual encounter and its aftermath in excruciating detail. Trump has been unusually restrained listening to this portion of the testimony. His main responses have been to tap his lawyer Susan Necheles, seeming to urge on her objections. Justice Merchan is noticeably upset, and Stormy Daniels seems confused, after some objections, about what to answer from prosecutors. We are in an intense, intense moment here. Daniels is describing a remarkably intense encounter, and says that the room spun in slow motion and the blood left her hands and feet. She says that Trump did not act particularly threatening but blocked her access to the door to the bedroom. Then she says she “blacked out,” though she did not take alcohol or drugs. At this point, the judge — who has sustained one objection and seems unusually angry — called for a sidebar. He sustains another objection. Stormy Daniels says she came out of the bathroom and found that Trump was in the bedroom, waiting for her, in his boxer shorts and a T-shirt. She had been planning to go, she said. He was seated on the bed, between her and the exit. “What did I misread to get here,” she describes thinking. She says she tried to leave and he blocked her path, but not in a threatening manner. Trump is staring straight ahead glumly as Stormy Daniels describes him in his underclothes sitting on the bed waiting for her. Stormy Daniels is talking about going to the bathroom in Trump’s hotel suite and seeing a “leather-looking” toiletry bag on the counter. She says she saw Old Spice and “manicure stuff” that was gold. Daniels keeps chuckling as she describes the scene, as if she's giving an interview. One of Trump’s go-to moves during testimony has been to close his eyes, which an adviser told me he has used during other trials to keep himself from blowing up. Sometimes, he also falls asleep. Today, he has tried to close his eyes but he has been mostly alert, and looking like his face is going to crack from tension. We are back from the break. Justice Merchan asked if the defense lawyers, spoke to Trump — it’s not clear about what. And the judge, in a rarity, admonishes the prosecutors, specifically Susan Hoffinger, saying that the level of detail they’re eliciting from Stormy Daniels is unnecessary. Daniels is back on the stand and as soon as the jury returns, we'll start up again. This is just the latest reminder that juries, even in the most prominent cases, almost never hear the full story. The evidence they are permitted to consider is always balanced against the possible prejudice it could have against the defendant. There’s no way to know how the jury is receiving Daniels’s account, but her demeanor on the stand — a fast talker, unfettered, prone to asides that are sometimes funny and sometimes distracting — is consistent with interviews I’ve seen of her. This is, in short, how she is: she is not putting on a show, or any staid artifice, for a courtroom audience.

And now, heeeeers Stormy: And the trial is on break. Trump walks out, on a break, ahead of his sizable legal team and today’s entourage. Stormy Daniels has been telling a similar version of this story for at least 13 years, since a 2011 interview that was not published at the time because Michael Cohen, then Trump’s fixer, threatened the publication, "Life & Style." At the time, Daniels said that regarding Trump's offers of putting her on The Apprentice, she came to wonder “if he was just flat-out lying the whole time,” according to a transcript. She said, “I didn’t have any unrealistic expectations of actually being on the show; I figured my chances were 50-50.” The interview was ultimately published in 2018, after the story of the hush-money payment came out. One of the undercurrents of this testimony is how mocking and derisive Stormy Daniels is of Trump. In her telling, she was experiencing him that same way in real time during that evening in 2006. She has described him as being arrogant, and interrupting her while she talked. Stormy Daniels says that Trump told her she reminded him of his daugher, presumably Ivanka. “She’s smart and blonde and beautiful and people underestimate her as well,” Daniels said Trump remarked. Stormy Daniels now takes on the defense's argument about her directly, saying that it was Trump himself who invited her to come on “The Apprentice,” not the other way around. This is fascinating, because we have seen many times the way that Trump accuses his adversaries of the same faults that he’s accused of. Here, Daniels is suggesting she wasn’t the one trying to use “The Apprentice” — he was, for sex. Stormy Daniels says she asked Trump during their dinner: “Are you always this rude? Are you always this arrogant and pompous? Like you don’t even know how to have a conversation.” Trump clearly mouths “bullshit” as Stormy Daniels recalls playfully spanking him with a rolled-up magazine, and saying he was much more polite afterwards. I wrote recently about how Trump’s advisers see the process as its own punishment in this case, and this testimony underscores that as much as anything. This testimony is hard to listen to for the audience; Trump is image-obsessed and controlling, and this is belittling by Stormy Daniels. Stormy Daniels says that during her dinner with Trump, she asked about his wife. He told her, she says, not to worry because the two did not “even sleep in the same room.” Trump and Melania were married in 2005, the year before this encounter. Trump shakes his head slightly and gives a sour look as Daniels says he told her that he didn't sleep in the same room as his wife. Trump is well known as a germophobe. Stormy Daniels has previously said that they had sex without a condom. This section of testimony — in which Daniels says she told Trump how frequently she was tested for sexually transmitted diseases — could help bolster the credibility of her story. Juan Merchan, the judge, has asked Daniels, who is on a long digression, to slow down. She has been speaking quickly the entire time she has been on the stand. Stormy Daniels has been directing many of her answers about the meeting with Trump in the hotel suite — which she described as much bigger than her home — directly to the jury, which is mostly expressionless. He was 60 at the time of this meeting, and Daniels was 27. The jurors are completely inscrutable as they listen to Daniels express very specific, well-honed opinions about adult films. It reminds us just how little we know about how they are reacting to this. Stormy Daniels says that Trump took an interest in the business aspects of her industry and asked about unions, residuals, and health insurance, as well about S.T.D. testing. Stormy Daniels is now talking about meeting Trump for dinner. She says that when he first emerged from his hotel suite, he was wearing “silk or satin” pajamas, which Daniels compared to those often sported by Hugh Hefner. She asked him to change, and he returned in more standard dress clothes. As Daniels is talking about entering Trump’s hotel suite, Trump whispers to his lawyer. He can’t stand feeling or appearing weak or powerless. But that’s exactly what he is here as Daniels is describing, in extensive detail, an encounter he continues to maintain didn’t happen. Daniels is describing Trump’s suite in Lake Tahoe in minute detail, every aspect down to the color of the tiles. She seems to have a photographic memory. Other presidents have had their secret affairs whispered about over the years — think John F. Kennedy — but it is surreal to have Stormy Daniels describing an encounter with Trump in this way, live from the witness stand. Stormy Daniels says that the first person she mentioned the dinner invitation to was her publicist, which to some extent gives the defense some ammunition, as they’ve painted Daniels as a grifter who was seeking to use Trump to benefit her career. The prosecutor, Susan Hoffinger, may be leaning into that in the same way her team has elicited damaging testimony about Michael Cohen: They’d rather that jurors hear it from the prosecution's witnesses up front, rather than allowing the defense to spring it on the jury as if the state were trying to hide it. Daniels recalls that her publicist urged her to go to the dinner, and asked her: "'What could possibly go wrong?'" Susan Hoffinger, the prosecutor, is asking about Trump inviting Daniels to dinner. Daniels says that she was approached by “Keith,” meaning Keith Schiller, Trump’s ominpresent bodyman. She says he took her number, though she refused the invitation initially. Daniels testifies that she saved Schiller in her phone as “Keith Trump,” and that his number remains in her phone to this day. Prosecutors are now showing the famous photo of Stormy Daniels and Trump in the gift shop at the Lake Tahoe resort they met at in 2006. One juror smiles as Stormy Daniels describes her initial reaction to Trump’s dinner invite: “No,” with an expletive attached. Stormy Daniels is recounting interactions with Trump after meeting him, and then getting a message he wanted to have dinner with her. She is asked to point him out in the courtroom, and she does by his navy jacket, pointing directly at him. He sits with no reaction. Trump looked at Stormy Daniels as she identified him but he hasn’t been reacting in any visible way to her testimony so far. We've seen none of the head-shaking and muttering that he did when he was on trial for defaming E. Jean Carroll. Some of Trump’s advisers and attorneys thought his reactions during that trial ultimately hurt him with the jury. Stormy Daniels is now describing the golf tournament at Lake Tahoe in 2006 where she met Trump. In a notable line, she says she knew that he was “as old or older than my father.” Daniels says she didn’t have a very substantive discussion with Trump and didn’t know much else about him. She knew he was a golfer, she says — they were on a golf course — and that he worked in reality television. And she knew of his show, “The Apprentice.” That year, 2006, marked the height of that show's popularity, and renewed Trump’s celebrity for a new generation. Stormy Daniels is a quick talker, and the prosecutor has asked her to slow down at least once to let the court reporter catch up. She intersperses her testimony with small laughs. Her storytelling is fluid. All I can see is the back of Trump’s head, so I can’t see his reaction. But I can see the angle of the witness stand, and the bench where the judge sits, and it looks to me as if the corner of the bench might be obstructing Stormy Daniels’s view of Trump. That may be helping her to relax a bit, as she talks about her podcast and a documentary film she appeared in. Stormy Daniels details how she recently got fired from a podcast because she was reluctant to continue talking about this case and about politics. This is an important bit of testimony that could rebut Trump’s lawyers’ argument that Daniels has made a career off of her sexual encounter with Trump. Stormy Daniels is now going through her résumé, including mainstream movies she appeared in like “The 40-Year-Old Virgin.” The prosecution is drawing out other work experience, including directing music videos, doing comedy, writing books and making podcasts, perhaps to show that she is more than just an adult film actress. As Stormy Daniels details her adult film career, Trump leans back and closes his eyes. As Stormy Daniels talks about moving from stripping to acting in adult films, she is continuing to talk very, very quickly. Though it's difficult to understand what she’s saying at times, the reaction is understandable. This is a witness talking about starting to act in adult films in front of a courtroom full of reporters and the former president of the United States. Susan Hoffinger, the prosecutor, guides Stormy Daniels toward talking about writing and directing adult films. This could be a savvy move, depending on the jurors’ reactions. Instead of dwelling on the sex itself, Hoffinger focuses on the professional aspects of the industry and gives Daniels credit for not just acting but steering the productions she was in. Prosecutors have made a point to note that Daniels did nude modeling and adult films as a way to make money and survive. She said she was scared to do her first pornographic film, but at the age of 23, she got a contract with Wicked Pictures, which makes them. As Stormy Daniels testifies about her background and life story, Trump is consistently whispering to his lawyer Todd Blanche. Trump has often had his eyes closed during uncomfortable moments of testimony in this trial. So far during this testimony, he is keeping them open. Stormy Daniels begins to talk about her career as a dancer — she began stripping, she says, because she made more money doing it than she did “shoveling manure,” work she had done previously at a stable. Her nervousness as she continues to speak very quickly could endear her to the jury — but this is a witness where the mentality of the jurors, a total mystery to us, is really important. Sex brings interesting reactions out in people, and Daniels's story is headed inexorably toward a story about sex. It’s hard to express how infrequently Trump is forced to come face to face with people who accuse him of impropriety, or people he has attacked. Stormy Daniels fits both categories. Stormy Daniels had a tough childhood in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Her parents split up when she was young and they had very little money, in her telling. All of this potentially creates a sympathetic portrait for the jury, humanizing somebody who is probably known to most jurors in one way: as a porn star who alleges she had an affair with Donald Trump. Stormy Daniels is walking the jurors through her childhood, looking at them as she talks. One female juror smiled and appeared to be laughing quietly just before Daniels was brought into the room. Daniels is quickly walking through some of her early biography: raised in Baton Rouge, wanted to be a veterinarian, editor of her high school newspaper. “The people call Stormy Daniels,” Susan Hoffinger says. She walks into the courtroom, dressed all in black, almost a robe with a hood on it. She takes the stand and is sworn in with her hand raised. Daniels sounds nervous as she spells her name. She has glasses pushed on the top of her head. After Daniels passed him at the defense table, Trump glanced in her direction. They did not make eye contact. Several members of the jury noticeably perked up when Stormy Daniels's name was called as a witness. Prosecutors and defense lawyers just had a lengthy sidebar at the judge’s bench. This is ahead of Stormy Daniels coming in, suggesting it’s about what prosecutors will be allowed to ask her. They had settled whatever they were discussing and gone back to their tables, then two minutes later went back to the bench. They’re now heading back to their seats. The jury looks transfixed.

Trial about to resume. Stormy, come on down! (But first, a different witness) The cross-examination is over. There will be some more questions from the prosecutor, Rebecca Mangold. But we are likely just minutes away from the testimony of Stormy Daniels. Todd Blanche, one of Trump's lawyers, is now cross-examining Sally Franklin, leaning into his customary line of defense: distancing Trump from the book published under his own name and trying to suggest that Meredith McIver, the ghost-writer who worked for him, was behind the language, as opposed to Trump. We have no idea how the jury is viewing any of this. But so far, Trump’s team isn’t offering an alternative narrative, but simply trying to knock at the prosecutors’ case. There’s an irony here with Trump’s counsel trying to cast doubt over whether Trump wrote his own books. Trump himself has always insisted — falsely — that all of the words printed in his name are his. During the White House years, Trump aides would implausibly claim on the record that Trump’s speeches were written by him. And this line of argument may be particularly hard to believe, given the way that Trump’s face is still smiling from the cover in the courtroom. An image like this is hard to forget, even as Blanche has turned to asking about the cover design. Yesterday, Jeffrey McConney told a story about Trump having told him he was fired for not paying close attention to the check balances, though he was not actually fired. Now we’re hearing that same story from one of Trump’s books. The prosecution is using it to help shore up McConney’s credibility as a witness. Now, Sally Franklin is walking the court through a chapter of a book in which Trump, in his own words, describes his frugality, including looking over bills to “make sure I’m not being overcharged.” The goal is to invalidate the idea that he could have been unaware of what he was paying Michael Cohen, or what the money was for. The prosecution is effectively using Trump himself as a witness here. In his own words — as laid out in his books — Trump is describing how he keeps a focus on minute details and watches every penny that leaves his accounts, a core part of the prosecution’s case against him. He’s also describing how he sees sexual potential in random women that he encounters. Trump may never testify in this trial. But it’s fascinating to watch prosecutors use his own words against him in this way. That smiling image of him on the book cover is the person testifying against him now: Past Trump putting Present Trump in jeopardy. Trump’s voice has been heard in court before — in video statements shown to the jury last week, for instance — but his written words today, drawn from his books and being read into the record, could even be more damning. He discusses his tendencies towards revenge, flirtatious behavior and frugality. “Even in high-end shops, I bargain,” he wrote. “I hate paying retail.” Rebecca Mangold, the prosecutor, is prompting Sally Franklin to read Trump’s written words from these books, including the following passages: “For many years, I’ve said that if someone screws you, screw them back,” and, “When somebody hurts you, just go after them as viciously and as violently as you can. Like it says in the Bible, an eye for an eye.” And now, we’re hearing a quote that says: “All the women on ‘The Apprentice’ flirted with me." This helps prosecutors address the argument that the defense is expected to make regarding Stormy Daniels: That she only knew Trump through her efforts to get on the show. But as this excerpt suggests — that doesn’t mean that Trump would not have been interested in a more intimate relationship. In fact, the quote suggests, he took special interest in the women who were on, and sought to be on, the show. We’ve talked a lot during this trial about Trump treating his own words as disposable commodities, intended for single use. But other people don’t view them that way, and here, his throwaway lines in a book that was one of many he churned out in the 2000s are being used as evidence of guilt in his trial. Around the time this book was published in 2004, Trump was churning out books so quickly that they were almost indistinguishable. His aide while writing this particular one was Meredith McIver, a Trump Organization official who briefly became famous in 2016 when the Trumps accused her of being the reason Melania Trump’s speech at the Republican National Convention plagiarized an earlier speech by Michelle Obama. The prosecutor and Franklin are having a lengthy back and forth over what percentage of the cover the word “Trump” takes up. Sally Franklin is a custodial witness — meaning that she is here to enter evidence that Trump's lawyers have not agreed to allow in — and she will testify about two books that Trump wrote, including “Trump: How to Get Rich” and “Trump: Think Like a Billionaire,” both of which were published by Ballantine, a Penguin Random House imprint. The cover of one of the books, “How to Get Rich,” is being displayed for the jury, the lawyers and the defendant, leaving Trump staring at a smiling portait of himself. Trump, who seconds ago was glaring furiously in the courtroom, is being shown to the court smiling innocently, almost cheesily, on a book cover that includes the tagline: “Big deals from the star of The Apprentice.” The book is described on Amazon as a tell-all “about the lessons learned from The Apprentice,” as well as “his most important role, as a father who has successfully taught his children the value of money and hard work.” The first witness is Sally Franklin, who works at Penguin Random House, a publisher. Susan Necheles, Trump's lawyer, said earlier that they had been told Stormy Daniels will be second. The jurors are coming in now. Most of the jurors bow their heads as they pass Trump en route to the jury box. The first witness is being called and it isn’t Stormy Daniels. During jury selection, Justice Merchan prioritized the jury. But in the excitement of the trial, he has made a very minor error three separate times: He keeps forgetting to have the jurors called in. It’s a testament to the atmosphere here, especially today on this very, very intense day. Susan Hoffinger, a prosecutor, clarifies that Stormy Daniels will not describe “genitalia.” This was — amazingly, given the defendant is a former president — an open question. Justice Merchan concedes that Daniels’s may have “credibility issues,” but that its up to the jury to determine that. Merchan, strikingly, seems a little nervous. Even though Stormy Daniels’s name hasn’t yet been called, we are already right into it. The implication of this argument is that Daniels will testify about having had sex with Trump. Susan Hoffinger, a prosecutor, is arguing that these details are key to the case — and that this issue has already been settled. She says that details that are too salacious will not be admitted, but that the story is “significant” and important to prosecutors in terms of Daniels’s credibility. Trump keeps trying to talk to Susan Necheles, his lawyer, as prosecutors argue why they should be able to question Daniels on “some details” and Necheles objects. Instead, he talks to another lawyer, Todd Blanche. Susan Necheles, one of Trump's lawyer, begins by objecting to Stormy Daniels testifying, including “any details” of any “sexual act.” One of Trump's lawyers, Susan Necheles, appears to be taking her seat to Trump’s right — suggesting she will be the one to cross-examine Stormy Daniels. Donald Trump did not answer reporters’s questions about why he deleted his Truth Social post from this morning, about how his lawyers hadn't had time to prepare for the next witness. Instead, he fell back on his usual practice of reading criticism that others have made about the prosecution's case and the trial. Trump has just walked into court, looking somber. So does his normally smiling lawyer, Todd Blanche. Eric Trump, his son, is back, as are Alina Habba and Boris Epshteyn. Trump is taking an unusual amount of time to survey the gallery. There are approximately 35 members of the public in the overflow courtroom. They are whispering excitedly as they wait for court to start, and they likely stood in line outside for hours this morning. It’s possible they may not know about Stormy Daniels’s imminent testimony as the court officers have reminded them, several times, to put their phones away. I expect we’ll see some kind of reaction from them when the prosecutors announce her name. As the prosecutors walk in, we wanted to clarify that we are calling Stormy Daniels by that name — rather than her birth name, Stephanie Clifford — because it is what she prefers. In fact, she has legally changed her name to Stormy Daniels. It is not clear what Stormy Daniels will testify about. Though the hush-money payment to her is at the center of the case, she was not directly involved in what prosecutors say were Trump’s efforts to cover up her account. Today, on the stand, she could tell her story from the beginning — meaning the story of having had sex with Trump in 2006, which he has always denied — or just stick to talking about how she received the $130,000 payment from Michael Cohen. So two major questions as we await her arrival are: 1. Why is she here? and 2. Is it worth it for the prosecution? That second question is will be particularly interesting once defense lawyers begin to question Daniels. This is the first time Trump will have to be face to face with Daniels and hear her accusations. He has continued to deny that an affair took place. This trial, unlike the other three criminal trials he’s facing, is personal for him in a very specific way, and Daniels has spoken about him and his physicality publicly in a humiliating manner. The courtroom, which felt frenzied just moments ago, has grown quiet with about a half hour to go before the day starts. None of the lawyers are here yet — the only people in the front of the room are court personnel, including at least one court reporter, already seated below the bench. It was clear this morning before the courtroom opened that today would be different. Many reporters anticipated that Stormy Daniels was likely the next witness, and the lines formed earlier. There's a very full courtroom today, with dozens of reporters packed to the very back, and a row of members of the public. Anticipation for Stormy Daniels's testimony is rising. Stormy Daniels, the porn star at the heart of Trump’s hush money trial is in the courthouse and is expected to testify today. Daniels is in an anteroom inside the Criminal Courts Building in Lower Manhattan, where she is set to testify for the prosecution. The witness Trump was referring to could have been Stormy Daniels. She is expected to appear as early as Tuesday. Good morning. We are heading into the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse. Trump posted on Truth Social an angry message saying he had just learned who the next witness is and that his lawyers had “no time” to prepare. Within thirty minutes, Trump had removed the post, likely because it risked prosecutors saying it violated the gag order. The fact that Trump deleted the post suggests there were some heated conversations behind the scenes with his lawyers. Trump hates deleting posts — he sees it as a sign of weakness — and has often resisted taking down even the most incendiary posts. He was ordered to delete several last week as one of the punishments for violating his gag order. One previous exception to Trump’s personal rule of never taking down posts was last year, when he posted a story on Truth Social that had an image of a baseball bat next to the head of Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan D.A. who brought this case. He deleted the post after private pleading from his attorneys.