Friday Briefing: Stormy Daniels, Day Two

Stormy Daniels, 45, leaving court yesterday.Credit…Justin Lane/EPA, via Shutterstock

A tense day in court for Stormy Daniels

Lawyers for Donald Trump again sought to make Stormy Daniels look as if she was lying yesterday about her account of a 2006 sexual liaison. But Daniels — who took the $130,000 hush-money payment at the heart of the 34 felony charges Trump is facing — pushed back.

“You made all this up, right?” a lawyer asked.

Daniels responded with a forceful “No.”

During a combative cross-examination — which started on Tuesday and continued yesterday — Daniels swung between vulnerability and defiance. When the defense attacked her for hawking gear to supporters, she responded by likening it to Trump’s own merchandising.

Susan Necheles, Trump’s lawyer, searingly questioned Daniels for more than two hours. As Necheles tried to undermine her credibility, Daniels continuously parried. In one exchange, Necheles suggested that Daniels, because of her career in porn, had a lot of experience with “phony stories about sex.”

Daniels shot back, “The sex in the films is very real, just like what happened to me in that room.”

A Daniels-Trump recap: They met in July 2006, but their lives intersected over the next decade and beyond. Here’s a breakdown of the timeline.