President Trump’s defense attorney wrestled with the adult film star Stormy Daniels, whose graphic testimony resumed on Thursday at the Manhattan hush-money trial. During an often heated and contentious cross examination, the defense sought to break her credibility and portray her as an extortionist.  

Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, entered the courtroom in a similar casual outfit to the one she wore on Tuesday, when she began testifying in the criminal case brought against Mr. Trump by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg. Instead of a black top and black pants, she wore a green dress, which she covered with a dark overcoat. Unlike other female witnesses, such as Hope Hicks, Ms. Clifford was lightly made up, almost as if she wanted to show that she was not going to get dressed up for Mr. Trump. Meanwhile, the former president was seated grimly at the defense table; the packed row of supporters behind him included Rick Scott, Florida’s junior senator.

Defense attorney Susan Necheles picked up where she left off on Tuesday, poking at Ms. Clifford for testifying that she wanted to get her story published while at the same time signing a nondisclosure agreement and receiving $130,000.

This alleged hush-money payment is at the heart of the criminal case. Ms. Clifford claims she had a one night sexual encounter with Mr. Trump at a celebrity golf tournament at Lake Tahoe in 2006. On Tuesday, she testified that during this liaison, she also spanked Mr. Trump in his penthouse hotel suite with one of his “financial magazines.” Mr. Trump denies ever having had sex with Ms. Clifford. 

The district attorney alleges that shortly before the 2016 election, Mr. Trump ordered his former personal lawyer and current nemesis, Michael Cohen, to pay Ms. Clifford so she would keep silent about her claim in an attempt to hide the salacious information from voters. Cohen wired Ms. Clifford’s attorney $130,000 on October 27, 2016. But when Mr. Trump reimbursed his attorney the following year, the prosecution alleges, he illegally disguised the payments as legal expenses. 

The defense was trying to prove that Ms. Clifford had made the deal with Cohen because she saw an opportunity to make money.

“In 2016 you were trying to sell your story, right?” Ms. Necheles asked. 

“Yes,” Ms. Clifford replied. 

“At this point, you were asking for money. You wanted money from President Trump, right?” Ms. Necheles pressed. 

“No,” Ms. Clifford said, “I never asked for money from President Trump.” She added, “I never asked for money from anyone in particular. I asked for money to tell my story… to get the truth out.” 

But Ms. Necheles reminded her that she signed a non-disclosure agreement and that would do the opposite, it would bury her story.  

“You choose to make money, right?” Ms. Necheles said.

Ms. Clifford insisted, as she had on Tuesday, that she was mainly concerned with her safety. After Ms. Daniels gave an interview in 2011 to the celebrity glossy InTouch about her sexual encounter with Mr. Trump, boasting that she could “describe his junk perfectly,” she claims she was approached and threatened by a man in a Las Vegas parking lot. Subsequently, she says, she feared for her safety. 

“I wanted the truth to be printed with some paper trail,” Ms. Clifford said. “With a target on my back on my family’s — it was the perfect solution.”

Ms. Necheles, who had suggested on Tuesday that Ms. Clifford had attempted to extort Mr. Trump, repeated her suggestion. 

“You were threatening that you would try to hurt Trump politically if he didn’t give you money?” Ms. Necheles asked

“False,” Ms. Clifford replied and leaned back comfortably in her chair. 

The defense then played a phone call that was recorded by Cohen, between Cohen and Ms. Clifford’s then-attorney, Keith Davidson, who brokered the deal and testified in the trial last week. 

“I just didn’t want you to get caught off guard, and I wanted to let you know what was going on behind the scenes,” Mr. Davidson is heard saying on the recording. “And I would not be the least bit surprised if… you see in the next couple of days that Gina Rodriguez’s boyfriend goes out in the media and tells the story that Stormy Daniels, you know, in the weeks prior to the election was basically yelling and screaming, and calling me a p—.”

Gina Rodriguez, whom Mr. Davidson was referring to, was Ms. Clifford’s talent manager at the time. It was Ms. Rodriguez, a former porn star herself, who had connected Ms. Clifford and Mr. Davidson.      

“I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised,” Mr. Davidson continued, “if he comes out and says, you know what, Stormy Daniels, she wanted this money more than you can ever imagine. I remember hearing her on the phone saying, you f—— Keith Davidson. You better settle this goddamn story. Because if he loses this election, and he’s going to lose, if he loses this election we lose all f—— leverage this case is worth zero. And if that happens, I’m going to sue you because you lost this opportunity. So settle this f—— case. That’s a far cry… from being, you know, bullied and pushed into settling a case.”

At this moment, Mr. Trump looked up at Ms. Clifford. Until then and after then, he had not looked at the witness at all; instead he was either writing notes to his attorneys or staring at the screen, where the exhibits are presented for the defendant, and where live camera footage shows the reporters in the pews behind him. 

Despite the challenging evidence, Ms. Clifford remained calm. “I never yelled at Keith Davidson over the phone,” Ms. Clifford said. “It sounds like a threat from Keith Davidson.”  

“You were running out of time to get money?” Ms. Necheles pressed. In the weeks leading up to Election Day 2016, Mr. Trump had been widely expected to lose to Secretary Clinton. Once that happened,  a story about his affair with a porn star would lose its currency.

Then Ms. Necheles dug into a statement Ms. Clifford signed in January 2018, denying the sexual encounter with Mr. Trump, shortly before the Wall Street Journal published a story describing the $130,000 payment and her nondisclosure agreement. The jury was shown the statement, which had been written by Mr. Davidson. 

“To be clear, I did not write this statement,” Ms. Clifford said. “I was told I had to sign it.”

Ms. Necheles focused on her client, Mr. Trump. “And he wanted you to deny it, correct?” she asked, referring to the sexual encounter. 

“Yes,” Ms. Clifford said.

“And he wasn’t running for election in 2018?” Ms. Necheles asked further.

“No,” Ms. Clifford said.

The defense attempted to distance Mr. Trump from the allegation that he wanted to hide the affair because of the election. Instead, as the defense argues, he wanted to hide it to protect his family and his brand. 

“He was concerned about his family, correct?” Ms. Necheles asked, adding that there “was nothing about his election going on then?” Ms. Necheles also asked, “And you understand President Trump has a brand?” 

“Yes,” Ms. Clifford answered. 

“You wanted to publicly say that you had sex with Trump,” Ms. Necheles continued. 

“No, no one would ever want to say that publicly,” Ms. Clifford fought back. 

Ms. Necheles continued to press Ms. Clifford, suggesting that the interview she gave generated lucrative publicity, and attention, and further offers; that she published a book, “Full Disclosure;” and in 2018 even went on a tour of strip clubs titled the “Make America Horny Again” tour. She also recently released a documentary, “Stormy,” on NBCUniversal’s Peacock streaming service.

Regarding the strip club tour, whose name lewdly references Trump supporters, “I did not name that tour and I fought it tooth and nail,” Ms. Clifford said on the stand. “I never used that headline — I hated it.”

Ms. Necheles calculated that Ms. Clifford made almost a million dollars off Mr. Trump through her book alone, for which she was paid $800,000, plus the $130,000 for the non-disclosure agreement.    

Perhaps, Ms. Clifford said, but “minus the commission and what was stolen from me.” Her sometime attorney, Michael Avenatti, who is currently serving a prison sentence, stole over $300,000 from her book advance.  

Then the defense showed the jury a tweet on X from March 2024. “Isn’t it a fact that you keep posting on social media that you would be instrumental in putting President Trump in jail?” Ms. Necheles asked.

“Show me where I say I would be instrumental in putting President Trump in jail,” Ms. Clifford defended herself. 

Ms. Necheles pointed to the tweet, in which Ms. Clifford responded to a message that had called her a “TOILET,” by writing, “Exactly! Making me the best person to flush the orange turd down.”

“I don’t see the word ‘instrumental’ or ‘jail,'” Ms. Clifford insisted. “You’re putting words in my mouth.”

When Ms. Necheles asked to whom Ms. Clifford was referring with the imprecation “orange turd,” Ms. Clifford answered, “I don’t know what I meant … I’m also not a toilet.”

Ms. Necheles then moved to discredit Ms. Clifford’s story by citing details from the 2011 interview with InTouch, which differed from her testimony. For example, according to the article, it was Mr. Trump who personally invited Ms. Clifford to have dinner with him at his hotel during the golf tournament at Lake Tahoe. But she told the court on Tuesday that it was Mr. Trump’s bodyguard, Keith Schiller, who had extended the invitation to her and arranged the meeting. Ms. Clifford had also told InTouch that she had dinner with Mr. Trump in his hotel suite, while she told the court on Tuesday that they never actually ate and that she was starving. 

But Ms. Clifford remained firm, “I went to dinner and didn’t get dinner,” she said, adding that she is very “food motivated” and “would have talked about the food.” Finally, she said to the defense attorney, who had pulled up the interview, “you’re showing me one sentence from an entire interview.” 

“Your story has completely changed, hasn’t it?” Ms. Necheles insisted. 

“You’re trying to make me say that it’s changed but it hasn’t changed,” Ms. Clifford punched back. 

As part of the InTouch interview in 2011, Ms. Clifford submitted to a polygraph test, as did one of her ex-husbands, to prove she was telling the truth.

After the barrage of graphic details from Ms. Clifford,  the defense asked the judge for a mistrial based on the fact that her descriptions of the sexual encounter had gone too far.

“What proceeded to happen was a whole host of questions that went way beyond the mere fact that it happened,” Mr. Blanche told the judge. “It almost defies belief we are here about a records case,” he added. “This is not a case about sex.”

“The nondisclosure agreement was entered. Whether it happened or not has nothing to do with the charges in this case,” Mr. Blanche argued.

The judge, Juan Merchan, blamed Ms. Necheles for not objecting when the prosecution asked Ms. Clifford if Mr. Trump had used a condom during intercourse. 

“For the life of me, I don’t know why Ms. Necheles didn’t object,” the judge said. He agreed with the prosecution that Ms. Clifford’s testimony was relevant due to the mere fact that the defense continued to deny the sexual encounter ever occurred.

“These details add a sense of credibility if the jury chooses to believe them,” Judge Merchan said. “Your motion for a mistrial is denied.” 

The judge also denied the defense’s request to modify the gag order, so that Mr. Trump could respond to Ms. Clifford’s testimony.

“My concern is not just with protecting Ms. Daniels or a witness who has already testified. My concern is with protecting the integrity of these proceedings as a whole,” he ruled.

After Ms. Clifford left the stand, the prosecution called three more witnesses: Tracey Menzies, who works at HarperCollins, the publishing company, who read excerpts of two of Trump’s books; Rebecca Manochio, an employee of the Trump Organization’s bookkeeping department, who spoke about mailing Mr. Trump’s checks to the White House for him to sign while he was president; and finally, Madeleine Westerhout, Mr. Trump’s trusted secretary at the White House, who will be back on the stand tomorrow.

“Everybody saw what happened today — I don’t think we have to do any expert explaining,” Mr. Trump told reporters at the end of the day. “I got to get back on the campaign trail. I’m not supposed to be here. We are so innocent.” 

Later on Wednesday evening, he posted some thoughts on his social media platform, Truth Social, carefully avoiding criticism of Ms. Clifford, who is protected by the gag order, and letting loose, in all capital letters, on the “crooked Joe Biden inspired trial” and the “corrupt and highly conflicted judge, Juan Merchan.”