Thread by @stewartbishop

Hello hello, back again at the hush money/fake business records/election misconduct/whatever else I'm not thinking of trial of Donald Trump in Lower Manhattan.

Anyway, it's another [insert storm joke here] day of testimony from Stormy Daniels, the adult film star who says she took hush money from Trump via his now-former attorney Michael Cohen as the 2016 election loomed, to keep quiet about her sexual encounter with Donald Trump.

Stormy’s on cross, which we got a little look at on Tuesday, and the strategy by Team Trump is obviously to attack her credibility, and paint her as money-driven, opportunistic liar.

Trump counsel Susan Necheles also took aim at judgments against Stormy requiring her to pay Trump $560k in legal fees stemming from a defamation suit against Trump, which she says was filed by her now-imprisoned former atty Michael Avenatti without her consent.

Speaking which of, it’s worth noting that this isn’t Stormy’s first rodeo. She testified against Avenatti down the street in the Manhattan US attorney’s case accusing him of defrauding her by stealing funds from her book deal for Stormy’s memoir “Full Disclosure.”

Avenatti represented himself at that trial, so he personally crossed-examined her. I covered that one and it was…weird. He lost.

As we found out from Tuesday’s transcripts, NY Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan took issue with Trump for “cursing audibly” during Stormy’s direct testimony and visibly shaking his head, which the judge said was “contemptuous.”

Justice Merchan warned Trump counsel Todd Blanche to keep his client in line. 

“You need to speak to him,” the judge said. “I won’t tolerate that.”

Very reminiscent of the NY AG’s civil fraud trial when Justice Arthur Engoron said the same thing to Trump atty Chris Kise.

Trump is already skating on thin ice with the judge here after being found in contempt of court for repeatedly violating the gag order preventing him from publicly attacking witnesses in this case, namely Stormy and his former personal attorney Michael Cohen.

Thus far, Trump has been fined $1000 bucks a pop (the max allowed under NY criminal law) for each violation, but the judge warned Trump the last time that he was risking jail if it happens again.

Trump claims the gag order is unconstitutional (1st Amendment), instituted by a partisan judge as part of a wide-ranging political conspiracy led by Joe Biden, designed to prevent him from getting elected to office again.

From yesterday on Truth Social

Trump this week went as far as suggesting he would welcome jail as opposed to letting the constitution be subverted.

Anyway he's in the courtroom now looking very blue (blue suit, blue shirt, blue tie).

Stormy is on the stand again, also wearing blue. Is that a thing today?

Trump counsel Susan Necheles is up again for cross. She gets just a few questions in before Justice Merchan calls a sidebar after an objection from the government. Sustained.

Necheles is asking Stormy about her contact with a reporter from Slate in 2016. Stormy says she was considering giving him the story.

"He was my backup in case the non-disclosure fell through," she says, referring to the hush money deal.

Necheles plays an audio recording for the court, it’s of a conversation between Michael Cohen and former Stormy lawyer Keith Davidson, in which he tells Cohen that Stormy in Oct. 2016 called Davidson “a pussy” and demanded that he sell her story or settle the matter.

“Stormy Daniels wants this money more than you could ever imagine,” Davidson tells Cohen.

Stormy denies this account.

"I never yelled at Keith Davidson on the phone," she says.

Necheles is asking Stormy about January 2018, when the WSJ broke the story about Daniels’ sexual encounter with Trump and the subsequent $130,000 hush money payment.

Stormy signed statements denying it at the time.

She’s previously said she felt that she had to, given the NDA.

Daniels confirms that when she finally went public with her story after that, she did indeed cash in. She got paid $800,000 for her memoir "Full Disclosure" after she appeared on CNN with Anderson Cooper for a tell-all.

Necheles asks Daniels about a strip club tour she went on after going public, which was called Make America Horny Again.

“I hated that [title],” Stormy says. “I fought that tooth and nail.”

Necheles keeps asking Stormy about this tour, saying she was “selling herself.”

Stormy says she wasn’t selling herself to anyone, she was dancing just like she always had.

Necheles asks Stormy about a documentary that Stormy did. Stormy says she’s received about $100,000 in connection with the film.

“You are continuing to this day to make money off of selling a story that you promised would put President Trump in jail,” Necheles says.

Necheles goes further, asking Stormy if she said she would be instrumental in putting Trump in jail.

Stormy denies it. Necheles brings up a tweet, where Stormy is responding to a right-wing Twitter account that refers to this trial and calls her a human toilet.

“Making me the best person to flush the orange turd down,” Stormy says in the tweet.

“I’m pretty sure that's hyperbole if someone calls me a human toilet , and I say flush [the orange turd down],” Stormy says.

"You're bragging about how you got President Trump indicted," Necheles says

“I got President Trump indicted?" Stormy replies.

Necheles shows the court a shot of Stormy’s merch page, in which she’s selling a “Saint Stormy of Indictments”candle.

“That’s not you bragging about how you are the saint who got President Trump indicted?” Necheles asks.

“I thought it was funny,” Stormy says.

Necheles goes into Stormy’s career, noting she’s appeared or directed about 200 adult films.

“You have a lot of experience in making phony [sex stories] appear real?” Necheles says.

“Wow,” Stormy says.

Referring to the Trump sexual encounter, Stormy says “if that story [wasn’t] true, I would have written it to be a lot better.”

Necheles is going after Stormy, repeatedly, for saying she had dinner with Trump on the night in question. Stormy says she was invited to dinner by Trump via his security guy, but they never actually had any food.

“It was dinnertime in the room,” Stormy says.

Necheles is asking Stormy about a 2016 interview with In Touch magazine about that night with Trump (it was not published at the time), saying she gave a different story than what she's saying now. Basically it’s about who was standing/sitting where in the room where it happened.

Daniels says that article was an abbreviated version of events.

“Your story has completely changed, hasn't it?” Necheles says

“No, not at all, you're trying to get me to say it changed but it hasn’t,” Daniels replies.

Back from a break, and Necheles goes back to Stormy’s strip club tour, “Make America Horny Again,” bringing up tour ads on her Instagram.

Necheles is trying to undercut Stormy’s testimony that she hated that name. Stormy brushes it off as a work thing she had to do.

Necheles goes back to the night in question in 2006 at a celebrity golf course.

“He did very well at that gold tournament, [didn’t he]?”Necheles asks.

“He was playing golf, I don't know what the scores were,” Daniels scoffs.

Necheles starts to ask Stormy about Trump's indictment. Stormy prompts her to be more specific.

"There are a lot of indictments," she says.

Necheles asks Stormy what the charges are in this case.

“Business records?” Stormy says.

“You know nothing about [Trump’s] business records,” Necheles says.

“I know nothing about his business records, why would I?” Stormy replies.

Trump's counsel ends her cross of Stormy by asking her something to the effect of 'isn't it a fact that you made up the story and have been making money off it for years?'

Prosecutors object, Justice Merchan sustains. ADA Susan Hoffinger is up for redirect.

Hoffinger asks Stormy about her contention that it was fear that motivated her into taking the $130,000 deal with Trump.

The jury is shown tweets attacking Stormy as an “aging harlot” and a disgusting degenerate prostitute.”

“Good luck walking down the street after this,” one says.

“These are pretty tame, actually,” Stormy says.

"Have you been telling lies about Mr. Trump or the truth about Mr. Trump?" Hoffinger asks.

"Truth," Stormy says.

Stormy explains that since she went public with her story, she’s had to hire security, move several times and now has to take extra precautions with her daughter.

“On balance, has your publicity [from] telling the truth about your experience with [Trump] been a net positive or a net negative in your life?” Hoffinger asks.

“Negative,” Stormy says.

That's it for Stormy. Next on the stand is Rebecca Manochio, a junior bookkeeper at the Trump Org. pursuant to a subpoena. Previously, she was Allen Weisselberg's assistant for eight years.

It sounds like Manochio is here to establish that reimbursement checks for Michael Cohen did in fact go back and forth between the Trump Org. and the White House in 2017.

And that's exactly what's happening we’re looking at FedEx invoices. Manochio confirms that the Trump Org. sent unsigned checks for Trump to his aides in DC, who sent them backed signed.

As we've heard before, Trump has (had?) a thing about signing his own checks.

That’s it for Manochio’s direct. We’re breaking for lunch.

We're back. The jury is going to be sent home a little early today at 4. Trump counsel Todd Blanche is going to renew his motion for a mistrial, and will also seek to block the testimony of Playboy model Karen McDougal and try to get Justice Merchan to loosen the gag order.

Tall order.

Manochio is back on the stand for a hot second and now steps down, and the next witness is...taking a long time to get here.

It’s Tracey Menzies, a VP at HarperCollins. Looks like we’re going to see more Trump books.

First up is “Think Big: Make It Happen in Business and Life” written by Trump and Bill Zanker, also published under the title, "Think Big and Kick Ass: In Business and in Life."

The jury is shown a number of Trump quotes.

“I say get the best people and don’t trust them.”

“As a matter of fact, I value loyalty more than anything else, more than brains, more than drive, more than energy.”

More Trump quotes.

“I think the reason why we have so many loyal people [is that] we reward loyalty and everyone knows this."

“I just can’t stomach the disloyalty.”

“My motto is always get even, when someone screws you, screw them back in spades.”

And Menzies is gone. Next on the witness stand is Madeleine Westerhout, formerly the director of Oval Office operations at the White House and onetime exec assistant to Trump. Also worked for the RNC.

Westerhout confirms that after the infamous Access Hollywood tape came out, there was talk among RNC leadership about how they would replace Trump as a candidate "if it came to that."

Westerhout says she worked at the White House from the start of the Trump Administration, and sat right outside the Oval Office.

Westerhout is being asked about Trump’s work habits, most of which are well known I think. Didn’t use a computer, no email, liked to either talk in person or on the phone, preferred hard copy documents to electronic.

She's asked about Trump's Twitter account. Westerhout says Trump would tweet himself or sometimes then social media director Daniel Scavino would help out. Sometimes Westerhout helped out.

Trump also liked to capitalize random words, she says.

"It was my understanding that he liked to use the Oxford comma," Westerhout says.

The jury is being shown what is essentially Trump's contact list. Familiar names, David Pecker, Michael Cohen, Weisselberg etc, but also random ones like Serena Williams.

I was wondering what any of this had to do with the case, but now Westerhout talks about Trump’s checks. Unsigned checks that were sent by two Trump aides to the WH. Looks like the DA wants to show there was someone on the DC side doing what Manochio was doing at the Trump Org.

Ok, thinks went from zero to 60 emotionally-wise. Westerhout breaks down on the stand crying while talking about how she was fired from the White House.

Westerhout was let go in 2019 after comments she made to reporters at an off-the-record dinner got out. According to Politico, she told reporters that she had a better relationship with Trump than he did with his daughters Ivanka and Tiffany.

Westerhout also is said to have claimed that Trump didn't want to be photographed with Tiffany because of her weight.

She's very much still a Trump loyalist, and speaks of him in glowing terms. Westerhout is asked about why she later wrote a book, "Off the Record: Picking Up the Pieces After Losing My Dream Job at the White House."

"I wrote the book because I needed time to process what I had just been through. I also wanted to document the incredible experience I had at the White House," Westerhout says.

"I also thought it was important to share with the American people the man I had gotten to know. I don't think history has been fair to him," Westerhout says, the last words barely being audible due to her crying.

That was strange. Her main value to prosecutors seems to be that she knew about the checks and can confirm a meeting that Trump and Michael Cohen had at the White House where prosecutors say the reimbursement deal was confirmed.

I'm not sure if that's what jurors are going remember from her testimony from this afternoon. She was seriously emotional, both about her apparent mistakes and her glowing words about Trump, Melania and the Trump children.

The jury is sent home. Trump counsel Todd Blanche says prosecutors have told him they no longer intend to call Karen McDougal to the witness stand.

Blanche asks Justice Merchan to modify the gag order in this case to allow Trump to rebut Stormy Daniels' testimony. He argues that she brought up issues of consent that were not previously part of her story, and Trump needs to be able to publicly respond.

Blanche claims now that Stormy has finished her testimony, there's no more need for the gag order as to her. Justice Merchan isn't having it, saying it's not just about protecting Stormy.

"My concern is protecting the integrity of this proceeding as a whole," the judge says.

Justice Merchan says future witnesses will see what attacks Trump brings against Stormy, which could impact their testimony.

Moreover, Justice Merchan tells Blanche that he can't take his word that Trump would be giving some kind of low-key response, which hasn't been Trump's M.O.

"The reason for the gag order is precisely because of the nature of the violations," the judge says.

Blanche didn't fair much better in his renewed motion for a mistrial. Much like his bid for a gag order modification, he argued that Daniels' testimony on the stand was materially different than what she has previously said publicly and was highly prejudicial to Trump.

Moreover, Blanche said that the prosecution had gone way too far in eliciting racy details of the night in question, which went way beyond that the sex just happened (which they dispute).

The reasoning goes like this. There was a hush money deal. Trump and/or Michael Cohen agreed to pay Daniels $130,000 in exchange for her signing an NDA and not going public with her story about the alleged sex. It doesn't matter if the sex actually happened or not.

The falsifying business records charges are about how Trump et al treated those payments in the Trump Org's books and records, so whether or not the underlying incident actual occurred is immaterial, so says Trump's side.

However, Justice Merchan said that Blanche himself opened the door for Daniels to spill the details when he argued in openings that the sexual encounter never occurred. Plus, he noted that the defense didn’t object to much of this testimony while it was happening. Motion denied.