Former President Donald Trump was not pleased when former porn actress Stormy Daniels took the stand Tuesday, prompting a warning from the judge to keep his emotions in check.
Daniels testified about the alleged sexual encounter she had with Trump. As she testified, Trump was “cursing audibly,” which lead New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan to warn Trump against possibly intimidating Daniels.
Merchan talked to Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanche in a sidebar telling him to keep his client in check, according The Washington Post.
“I understand that your client is upset at this point,” Merchan said, according to the court transcript, “but he is cursing audibly and he is shaking his head visually and that’s contemptuous. It has the potential to intimidate the witness and the jury can see that.”
Blanche said he would speak to Trump about the matter.
“I am speaking to you here at the bench because I don’t want to embarrass him,” Merchan said. “You need to speak to him. I won’t tolerate that.”
At one point, Daniels’ testimony was so graphic regarding her alleged sexual encounter with Trump in 2006 that Trump’s attorneys called for a mistrial, which Merchan denied.
However, Daniels appeared to be talking about nonconsensual sex, which could be highly prejudicial for the jury, per The Post, which added this could be the basis of an appeal if Trump is found guilty.
Trump is accused of 34 counts of falsifying business records. He allegedly falsified financial transactions that were part of $130,000 hush money paid to Daniels in 2016.
The money was in exchange for her silence in the alleged sexual encounter, which Trump denies ever taking place.
Daniels testified that she met Trump at a golf event in Lake Tahoe, California. She was invited to go to his hotel suite that night.
They talked for a couple of hours, she said, then Trump walked out of the bathroom with T-shirt and boxers on. He also posed on the bed.
“That’s when I had that moment when I felt like the room spun in full motion. And I felt the blood leave my hands and my feet, almost like if you stand up too fast,” she said.
Even though Trump “stood up between me and the door, not in a threatening manner,” he had the power in that situation as there was a security guard outside.
“I think I blacked out,” Daniels said. She said she didn’t remember much, but also said she was not drugged.
“Next thing I know I was on the bed,” she said. “I was staring at the ceiling. I didn’t know how I got there.”
She described the encounter as brief.
Before Daniels took the stand, Trump’s attorneys said it would be unfair to him is she went into graphic detail about the alleged sexual encounter since he was not charged with that.
Merchan told prosecutor Susan Hoffinger keep the details brief, but she asked Daniels details about the alleged encounter as well as other details, including the shampoo in the bathroom.
Trump’s attorneys fought against this testimony and asked for a mistrial.
“All of this has nothing to do with this case, is extraordinarily prejudicial and the only reason why the government asked those questions, besides pure embarrassment, is to inflame this jury to not look at the evidence that matters,” Blanche said.
