According to the AP agency, the meeting of the two central actors in the case resulted in the biggest drama so far in the first criminal trial of any US president.
The witness described how she ended up in bed with Trump years ago after accepting his invitation to an evening meeting in a hotel suite. It follows from her answer that she did not intend to have sex with him at the time, she did not say no to Trump, because at that moment she did not intend to have anything at all.
This statement was interrupted many times by the objections of the defense and Judge Juan Merchan accepted many of them. The prosecution before the preliminary witness stated that it would not go into the details, but the judge was clearly not satisfied with the result and at one point admonished Clifford not to divert her questions from the darkness.
Cliffordov, who goes by the pseudonym Stormy Daniels, claims she had sex with Trump in 2006, about a year and a half after the New York businessman married Melanie Knavs. In June 2016, then-Trump’s chief Michael Cohen paid Clifford 130,000 dollars (about millions of crowns) so that his record would not become public during the height of the election campaign.
The payment is a key point in the case against the head of the state, which, according to the prosecutor’s office, falsified financial records in an attempt to conceal the transaction.
Prosecutors present it as part of a larger criminal conspiracy, the aim of which was to influence the 2016 election by concealing various claims that could damage Trump.
Manelka don’t even sleep in the same room
In the first part of her testimony, Cliffordov stated that Trump invited her to his hotel suite in the summer of 2006 after they met at a golf tournament in Lake Tahoe, California, where his film studio was one of the sponsors. The prosecution showed stupid jurors a photo from the event in which the pair is captured together, as well as the contact information for Trump’s bodyguard, who saved Clifford’s on her phone at the time.
She described Clifford’s meeting in great detail and spoke about Trump’s clothing, the suite’s furnishings and the details of their evening conversation. According to him, when asked about his wife, Trump replied that he didn’t have to worry, because we don’t even sleep in the same room.
The AP described Clifford as a cheerful and devoted witness. Today, the 45-year-old woman was speaking so fast that prosecutor Susan Hoffingerov and then Judge Merchan asked her to slow down.
Seventy-seven-year-old Trump repeatedly showed disapproval in court during his testimony by shaking his head or muttering remarks to his firstborn. According to AP, the killer listened with anguish and disgust.
Pbh Cliffordov has been famous for six years, but on Tuesday the actress kissed him, while the ex-president was in the same room, noted The New York Times (NYT). Trump insists there was no romance, and his team describes Clifford as a fraud who lied about fame and a pension.
The witness described on Tuesday that she also met with Trump in 2007, and after that he did not ask her to keep their two meetings secret. As the NYT notes, this issue supports the cover’s argument that the later effort to secure it was motivated by the pre-election campaign.
Cliffordov said that the question about her pbh appeared after the scandal broke out in the fall of 2016 about the tape, on which Trump talks about being involved. She added that it was not about the pension, but that she considered the agreement with Cohen to be ideal.
Clifford’s drink appeared in the fourth week of the trial of Trump, who is the first ex-president to be indicted in the history of the United States and went along with those indictments.
In New York, he is charged with 34 counts of forgery and other financial documents. According to the prosecutor, he committed this after he was elected, when he returned the pension paid to Cohen by Clifford and declared the payments as payments for the first services.
