Stormy Daniels grilled about sex story in hush money case

Porn star Stormy Daniels said Thursday that public discussion of her sex history with former President Donald Trump has affected her life.

“Negative,” Daniels testified when a prosecutor asked whether telling the reality about Trump had been a “net positive” or “net negative” for her.

Daniels gave the blunt answer shortly before she was dismissed from Trump's hush money trial after two days on the witness stand in Manhattan Supreme Court.

Daniels' second-day testimony turned combative at times under cross-examination by Trump lawyer Susan Necheles, who questioned the adult film star about her alleged 2006 one-night stand with the then-married businessman.

The lawsuit is central to District Attorney Alvin Bragg's case involving a $130,000 hush-money payment to Daniels by Trump's then-personal attorney Michael Cohen shortly before the 2016 presidential election.

Daniels once scoffed at Necheles' suggestion that she ever need to tell the world that she had sex with the previous president.

“Even though you had agreed not to discuss this alleged story and had received a lot of money for this agreement, you then decided to say publicly that you had sex with Donald Trump,” Necheles said.

Daniels retorted: “No one would ever want to say that publicly.”

At one other point, Necheles told Daniels, “You have a lot of experience telling false stories about sex.”

Daniels replied: “Wow. I wouldn't put it that way. The sex in the films is very real, just like what happened to me in this room.”

She added that if her claim of sleeping with Trump were unfaithful, “I would have written it a lot better.”

After Daniels left court, prosecutors called Rebecca Manochio, the previous assistant to former Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg.

Manochio, who still works as a junior accountant for the corporate, testified briefly a couple of series of Trump Organization invoices from 2017.

Prosecutors then called Tracey Menzies, senior vice chairman at HarperCollins Book Publishing, to the stand. Menzies read passages from Trump and Bill Zanker's 2008 book “Think Big: Make It Happen in Business and Life.”

While the trial was underway, Senator Rick Scott showed up on the courthouse to beat up the judge's daughter and Bragg's wife.

“Let’s look at who is involved,” said the Florida Republican, who entered the courtroom alongside Trump on Thursday morning.

“The lead accuser was a No. 3 person at Biden — the Biden Justice Department. The judge's daughter is a political activist and raises money for the Democrats. You have the lead prosecutor's wife, who is a major donor to the Democrats, and I think that's Biden,” he said.

Trump is barred from speaking about all three of these people, as well as witnesses, jurors, court staff and their families because of a confidentiality obligation. The gag order also prohibits Trump from “directing others to make public statements” about these parties.

“So that is only a bunch of Democrats saying, 'We need to make sure that Donald Trump can't talk,'” Scott said.

Asked whether Scott appeared at the trial because of Trump's gag order, the senator replied: “No, I'm fed up.”

Merchan has charged Trump with contempt of court 10 times for violating his confidentiality agreement. On Monday, the judge warned Trump that he would be sent to prison if he continued to violate court orders.

Daniels' first day of testimony sparked an angry reaction from the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

On Tuesday, Merchan warned Trump's lawyers that the former president needed to stop swearing and shaking his head during Daniel's testimony because he could intimidate them or influence the jury.

“I understand that your client is upset at this point, but he’s audibly cursing and visually shaking his head, and that’s contemptible,” Merchan said during a break in Daniels' testimony.

“It has the potential to intimidate the witness and the jury can see that,” Merchan said, according to court transcripts released Tuesday night. “You have to talk to him. I won’t tolerate that.”

The judge gave the warning at the bench, out of earshot of reporters in the courtroom, because he said he didn't want to “embarrass” Trump.

The former president's outbursts got here as Daniels testified – in graphic detail – about her alleged sexual encounter with Trump in 2006, shortly after she met him at a star golf tournament in Lake Tahoe.

Trump is accused of falsifying business records in reference to a $130,000 hush money payment to Daniels. Prosecutors allege the cash was a part of an illegal scheme to learn Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.

Cohen paid Daniels for her silence in regards to the alleged sex lower than two weeks before this election. Trump compensated Cohen after he became president.

Although the hush money case is usually viewed because the least serious of the 4 criminal charges against Trump, it’s increasingly likely that it would be the one case to go to trial before the Nov. 5 presidential election.

On Wednesday, a Georgia appeals court potentially delayed a state-level trial of Trump on election interference charges by agreeing to grant his request to disqualify his prosecutor, District Attorney Fani Willis.

On Tuesday evening, federal judge Aileen Cannon indefinitely postponed Trump's trial amid allegations that he illegally obtained classified documents after which tried to cover them from authorities.

A federal election interference case against Trump in Washington, DC, meanwhile, is on hold while the Supreme Court considers whether Trump is immune from charges because he was president on the time of the alleged crimes.