Donald Trump enters courtroom with Republican senator in tow
Sam Levine
Donald Trump is entering the courtroom and pointed at someone in the press section who stood up to greet him as he walked in.
He’s trailed by his lawyers, Alina Habba, Boris Epshteyn and senator Rick Scott. Scott is seated in the first row.
Just before walking into the courtroom, Trump paused in the vestibule to talk with his attorney Todd Blanche and the small team that he entered with.
Key events
The judge is on the bench.
Prosecutors just successfully objected to having Donald Trump’s team introduce a prior arrest.
Judge Juan Merchan says anyone can be arrested for anything at any time, it doesn’t prove anything.
Donald Trump enters courtroom with Republican senator in tow
Sam Levine
Donald Trump is entering the courtroom and pointed at someone in the press section who stood up to greet him as he walked in.
He’s trailed by his lawyers, Alina Habba, Boris Epshteyn and senator Rick Scott. Scott is seated in the first row.
Just before walking into the courtroom, Trump paused in the vestibule to talk with his attorney Todd Blanche and the small team that he entered with.
Rick Scott, the Republican Florida senator, is expected to be in court with Donald Trump today, NBC News reported.
Seated in the overflow room is former judge Jeanine Pirro – a staunch defender of Trump who has called the trial a “kangaroo courtroom”, the outlet said.
Donald Trump’s motorcade has arrived at the Manhattan courthouse.
Juan Merchan, the judge, has instructed that photography is no longer allowed in the courtroom for the rest of the trial, per pool, citing a court officer.
The officer said that a pool photographer violated the court order by taking a photograph of Trump from the aisle. The order permits photographers to take photos only from the well itself.
Satin pajamas and mistrial denied: key takeaways from Tuesday’s trial
Hugo Lowell
Stormy Daniels, whose alleged sexual affair with Donald Trump prompted a hush-money scheme at the heart of the criminal case brought by the Manhattan district attorney, described in excruciating detail on Tuesday her encounters with the former US president.
The testimony from Daniels appeared to be embarrassing for Trump, who shook his head at times, and was notably freewheeling – to the extent that the presiding judge sustained multiple objections, even as he denied a mistrial motion on the basis that key parts of her account were prejudicial.
Daniels was wired $130,000 by ex-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen just before the 2016 election to bury her account of the affair. Prosecutors allege Trump later reimbursed Cohen the money but covered up its nature by falsifying business records and in doing so, violated state election laws.
Here are the key takeaways from Tuesday, day 13 of Trump’s criminal trial.
Necheles also asked Daniels if she “hated” Trump.
“Am I correct in that you hate President Trump?” Yes.
“And you want him to go to jail?”
I want him to be held accountable.
“Part of the reason you hate him is because he won a legal case against you, and you owe him today, over half a million dollars, right?” Necheles said.
“He didn’t win the case – he won attorneys fees.
“So you agree with me, he won the case and he was awarded over half a million dollars in legal fees?” Correct.
The defense is expected to continue questioning Daniels today after a tense cross-examination on Tuesday.
Trump lawyer Susan Necheles suggested Daniels was hoping to get out having to pay Trump a roughly $250,000 judgement entered against her in federal district court in California.
Necheles repeatedly questioned Daniels about whether she was motivated by making money.
In one instance, she asked about why Daniels got into the porn industry, asking: “It’s that simple: “You want[ed] more money?” Daniels responded: “Don’t we all want more money in our jobs?”
She later returned to questions of money: “You’ve been making money by claiming to have had sex with Donald J Trump, for more than a decade?”
“I’ve been making money telling my story [about] what happened,” replied an increasingly irked Daniels.
Necheles asks again: “It has made you a lot of money?” Daniels shot back: “It has also cost me a lot of money.”
Stormy Daniels arrives at courthouse
Stormy Daniels has arrived at the Manhattan courthouse for her second day of testimony.
Kira Lerner
In another significant win for Trump, Georgia’s state court of appeals on Wednesday said it would consider an appeal from the former president against an order allowing Fani Willis, the Fulton district attorney, to continue prosecuting his election interference case in Fulton county.
The decision to hear the appeal is a significant win for Trump. It decreases the chances that the case will go to trial before the November election and allows Trump and his lawyers to continue to undermine Willis’s credibility and keep questions about her judgment in the public eye.
Here’s the full story from Kira Lerner, Sam Levine and George Chidi:
Trump’s New York criminal case is the first of four such cases to reach a jury, while the other three have been hit by serious delays that could prevent them from starting before November’s presidential election.
Also on Tuesday, the federal judge in the case alleging Trump retained classified documents at this Mar-a-Lago club in Florida indefinitely delayed setting a trial date after ruling the case was nowhere near ready to face a jury.
My colleagues Hugo Lowell and Cameron Joseph have the full story:
The federal judge overseeing Donald Trump’s prosecution on charges of retaining classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago club on Tuesday formally scrapped her scheduled 20 May trial date without setting a new date, ruling the case was nowhere near ready to take before a jury in Florida.
The fact that the original May trial date would not hold was a foregone conclusion and has been apparent since last year, given delays with pre-trial litigation and the number of unresolved legal issues that have only increased in recent months.
The presiding US district court judge Aileen Cannon set several new deadlines in a five-page order scrapping the trial date, seemingly in an effort to get the case back on track, but the drawn-out nature of the dates cast doubt on the likelihood of a trial before the 2024 election.
Victoria Bekiempis
The Guardian’s Victoria Bekiempis has been reporting from court – and saw first-hand how Stormy Daniels’ testimony got off to a lurid start.
She writes that as Daniels took her seat on Tuesday, Trump turned to look at her and then leaned back in his chair, with an impassive look on his face. Trump’s son Eric, who was in the front row of the gallery, behind his father, looked at the wall. Alina Habba, a Trump attorney not on this case, sat with her arms crossed.
The long-awaited courtroom showdown between Daniels and Trump then began. Over the course of several hours, Daniels dished up a made-for-tabloid mix of titillation and gossip in detailing an alleged encounter with him some 20 years prior.
You can read her full report on the details of Daniels’ testimony here:
At a glance: what happened on first day of Stormy Daniels’ testimony
Léonie Chao-Fong
Daniels testified for nearly four hours on Tuesday. Here’s a recap of her first day on the stand:
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Daniels testified that she and Trump had a sexual liaison in 2006 that left her nervous and ashamed. Prosecutors allege that in 2015, Trump, his then lawyer Michael Cohen and tabloid honcho David Pecker plotted to bury stories that could thwart his Republican presidential bid. Cohen allegedly shuttled a $130,000 hush-money payment to Daniels less than two weeks before the 2016 presidential election, to keep her from going public about her claimed sexual liaison with Trump.
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Daniels said she had met Trump at a celebrity golf match in Lake Tahoe, and that she had gone to his hotel room under the belief that they would be getting dinner after meeting there. Per instructions from Trump’s bodyguard, Keith Schiller, she arrived at his penthouse to find Trump wearing “silk or satin pyjamas” and she asked him to change.
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Daniels said Trump repeatedly grilled her on her time in the adult industry, including: “What about testing? Do you worry about STDs?” He asked whether she had been tested. She later testified that Trump did not use a condom.
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Daniels said there was a brief discussion of Trump’s wife, Melania Trump, during which he said they slept in separate rooms. She also said he compared her to his daughter, Ivanka Trump.
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Daniels said she used the restroom and when she exited, she saw Trump on the bed in his boxers and a T-shirt. “I just thought: oh my God, what did I misread to get here?” She said, comparing it to a “jump scare”. “The intention is pretty clear if someone’s stripped down to their underwear and on the bed.” She said it suddenly felt like the room was spinning, like blood was draining from her hands and feet.
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Daniels said that she tried to make a joke and leave, but Trump stood up between her and the door. She testified that Trump told her: “I thought you were serious about what you wanted, if you want to get out of that trailer park.”
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Daniels said she “blacked out” during her “brief” sexual encounter with Trump. “I was not drunk, I was not drugged … I just don’t remember,” she told the jury. She said she “was staring up at the ceiling and didn’t know how I got there”. She testified that she remembered her hands were “shaking so hard that I was having a hard time getting dressed” afterwards, and that Trump told her: “Let’s get together again, honey bunch!”
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Trump’s team demanded a mistrial over what they said were prejudicial and irrelevant comments. The judge rejected the request and said defense lawyers should have raised more objections during the testimony.
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Daniels said that in 2011, a man approached her at a Las Vegas car park and threatened her against coming forward. Her former attorney, Michael Avenatti, publicized a sketch of the man, and then filed a defamation suit after Trump denied involvement. Daniels said she thought a defamation claim was “risky” and “not worth it”, but that Avenatti filed it without her permission. The case was thrown out, in Trump’s favor.
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Under cross examination, Daniels acknowledged that she “hates” Trump. “I want him to be held accountable,” she told the jury. Daniels also admitted she has chosen not to pay about $560,000 in legal fees that she owes to Trump after she filed and lost a defamation suit against him.
Stormy Daniels faces further questioning from Trump lawyers
Good morning and welcome back to our live coverage of Donald Trump’s hush-money trial where Stormy Daniels is returning to the stand for a second round of testimony.
The adult film star, whose brief alleged affair with the former US president has been the subject of much salacious questioning by prosecutors, will face further cross-examination from the defense.
The relationship between Trump and Daniels is central to the case because Trump’s then lawyer and personal fixer, Michael Cohen, paid her $130,000 to keep quiet about their alleged sexual encounter during the 2016 election campaign.
Prosecutors argue that the money paid to Daniels was therefore an election expense and was deliberately entered wrongly in Trump’s business documents – with that act being the crime, rather than anything to do with the actual payment of hush money to cover up the alleged affair.
However, during the last court session on Tuesday Daniels went into detailed descriptions of her sexual relationship with Trump, prompting a rebuke from Judge Juan Merchan and Trump’s lawyers to again bid – unsuccessfully – for a mistrial.
Daniels testified that she pocketed about $96,000 of the $130,000 payment, after her agent and lawyer took cuts. The news of the pay-off only emerged in the US media in 2018.
Trump is charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection with the payments and had pleaded not guilty.
Court is expected to resume at 9am ET. We’ll bring you all the latest from our reporting team in the Manhattan criminal courthouse as we get it.
