Trump Posts — Then Deletes — Rant About Stormy Daniels Testifying

Stormy Daniels took the stand at Donald Trump’s ongoing criminal hush-money trial on Tuesday, and even the former president seemed caught off guard by the news.

Trump posted — then quickly deleted — a furious rant about the prosecution’s plan to call Daniels shortly before The Associated Press reported on it ahead of Tuesday’s proceedings.

“I have just recently been told who the witness is today. This is unprecedented, no time for lawyers to prepare,” the former president wrote. “No Judge has ever run a trial in such a biased and partisan way. He is CROOKED & HIGHLY CONFLICTED, even taking away my First Amendment Rights. Now he’s threatening me with JAIL, & THEY HAVE NO CASE.”

This is the first face-to-face encounter Trump and Daniels have had since news of the former president’s affair and attempted payoff of the porn star first went public in 2018.

Merchan ruled as court began that Daniels can testify about her alleged sexual encounter with Trump and “how she felt about it,” but that he didn’t want to hear any of the nitty-gritty regarding the alleged affair with Daniels. We don’t need to know the details of intercourse,” Merchan said. Prosecutors assured the court that Daniels would not be describing “genitalia” in her testimony, ensuring the jury would not be subjected to another mushroom-comparison session.

Daniels instead testified about her early life and her entry into adult entertainment at the age of 17. She detailed having met Trump at a golf tournament in 2006, when she was 27 years old and — as she tells it — Trump was already older than her father.

Trump invited Daniels to his hotel room for dinner, she testified, describing for the jury how she asked Trump if “Mr. Hefner [knows] you stole his pajamas?” when he answered the door in a pair of satin pajamas. During their conversation, Daniels claims Trump suggested she compete on his celebrity reality TV show The Apprentice, telling her that she reminded him of his daughter who was “smart, blonde and beautiful and people underestimate her.”

Trump — who’s made a habit of closing his eyes and maybe falling asleep during the trial — was reportedly irked throughout Daniels’ testimony, especially as she described the circumstances around their alleged sexual encounter. According to CNN, the former president “scowled” at the witness stand and frequently whispered to his attorneys.

Merchan admonished the prosecution and Daniels at one point for giving way too much information about her alleged sexual encounter with Trump. “The degree of detail you are going into here is just unnecessary,” Merchan told the prosecuting attorneys questioning Daniels, after repeatedly sustaining objections from Trump’s defense team regarding graphic lines of questioning — including what position the pair were in and Daniels’ claim that Trump didn’t use a condom.

“Just listen to the question and answer the question,” the judge told Daniels directly.

During a break in the proceedings, Trump took to Truth Social to demand that his case be declared a mistrial.

Trump’s attorneys echoed the demand when the court returned from its lunch hour. “A lot of the testimony this witness talked about today is way different than the story she was peddling in 2016,” Todd Blanche told Merchan.

“I do think there are something things that would have been better left unsaid,” Merchan said. “Having said that, I don’t believe we’re at a point where a mistrial is warranted.”

During cross-examination, Trump’s attorneys did their best to poke holes in Daniels’ story, repeatedly questioning her on details given earlier in her testimony and on comments she’s made publicly in the past.

Daniels was repeatedly asked about past instances in which she denied having had a sexual relationship with Trump. She was asked multiple times about her claims that she was threatened by a man in a parking lot in 2011, with Trump’s attorneys accusing her of inventing the story.

“This man never existed, did he?” attorney Susan Necheles asked.

“He absolutely existed,” Daniels replied.

Necheles also suggested that Daniels has been making “a lot of money” for years by publicly “claiming to have had sex with President Trump.” Daniels countered that while she had made money telling her story, she’s also faced lawsuits and financial penalties. In April of last year, a federal appeals court ordered Daniels to pay Trump’s lawyers over $121,000 in legal fees stemming from her failed defamation suit against the former president.

Trump stands accused of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to allegations that the then-candidate and his associates made hush money payments to women, including $130,000 to Daniels, in order to aid his 2016 presidential election campaign. In order to cover up the alleged illegal campaign expense, prosecutors have accused the former president of unlawfully masking reimbursement payments to his former attorney, Michel Cohen, as legal expenses. As the woman at the center of the alleged scheme, Daniels’ testimony is expected to be a central component in the prosecution’s case against the former president.

On Monday, Jeffrey McConney, former senior vice president comptroller for the Trump Organization, detailed the process through which Cohen would be reimbursed for a supposed “retainer” that was allegedly intended to cover up the payment Cohen made to Daniels. McConney and Trump Organization Accounts Payable Supervisor Deborah Tarasoff both testified that the money used to reimburse Cohen had come from the “Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust” account, which only Trump himself could sign checks for.

Each of the checks signed by Trump as part of Cohen’s reimbursement represents one count of falsification of business records.

Last week, former tabloid boss David Pecker, who aided Trump and Cohen in arranging several of the hush money payments made in 2016, testified that the former president knew the details of the payment to Daniels. Pecker recalled that Trump complained to him that Stormy Daniels had breached the hush-money deal she’d made with Trump fixer Michael Cohen after the porn star gave a televised interview about her alleged affair with the former president.

Ahead of court on Tuesday, Trump read a statement to reporters denying the illegality of the reimbursement payments to Cohen. “We paid a lawyer expense payments. We didn’t put it down as construction costs, the purchase of sheetrock, the electrical cost, the legal expense that we paid was put down as ‘legal expense.’ There’s nothing else you could say.”

“That’s what they’re trying to get us on. We called it a legal expense. They marked it down in the books. The check was signed,” Trump added.

Trump may have deleted his post about Daniels’ forthcoming testimony Tuesday morning because he is explicitly barred from attacking or commenting on witnesses in the case through a limited gag order imposed by Judge Juan Merchan. On Monday, Merchan ruled for the second time that Trump had violated the order through his public statements and social media posts, finding him in contempt of court and threatening him with jail time if he violates the order again.

“It appears that the $1,000 fines are not serving as a deterrent,” Merchan told Trump on Monday. “The last thing I want to do is to put you in jail. You are the former president of the United States, and possibly the next president as well. There are many reasons why incarceration is truly a last resort for you.”

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