Editor's note: Norman Eisen is a CNN legal analyst and editor of “Trying Trump: A Guide to His First Election Interference Criminal Trial.” He served as counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during the first impeachment and trial of then-President Donald Trump. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. Read more opinion pieces on CNN.
CNN —
I imagine two more different days in the trial than Monday's dry but necessary accounting evidence and Tuesday's consistently fascinating, even sometimes creepy, out-of-control testimony from Stormy Daniels. It's difficult. The much-anticipated witness in former President Donald Trump's Manhattan criminal trial ultimately checked a box that was important to both sides, but even more so for the prosecution. This was to be expected since they called her to the stand.
Daniels, an adult film actress who received $130,000 in hush money in 2016, is at the center of the felony false business records case against Trump. Prosecutors allege that documents were altered to cover up Trump's payments and to cover up her story about sexual encounters with Trump, which he denies. They allege that the payments were made to, among other things, illegally influence the presidential election.
We break down Daniels' testimony into five key “C” elements.
Curiosity: From the moment Daniels entered the room on stage right, the eyes of the jury, in fact, of everyone in the courtroom, were on her. That included Trump, who repeatedly glanced at her and then looked away as she began her testimony. She dressed modestly, her all-black outfit highlighting her pin-up blonde hair as she told her story. Jurors expect to meet with key players in the case, and will reward prosecutors for providing access, as the district attorney did here.
The characters: Assistant District Attorney Susan Hoffinger spent the first 15 minutes or so of direct examination introducing Daniels to the jury. She wasn't what they expected from the “porn star” label. The jury heard her wear black horn-rimmed glasses, her childhood in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, her love of horses and scholarship to the Texas A&M veterinary program, and her career as an actress in both adult films and films. When I started testifying about this, I watched carefully. Mainstream films, directors, screenwriters, and book authors. Like the rest of us, jurors need to get to know the witness, and Hoffinger took the time to do that, conveying a likeable character through biographical details.
Credibility: Daniels then testified in detail about meeting and having sex with Trump in 2006, establishing to the jury that the alleged encounter occurred and that she was trustworthy. .Daniels provided details down to how unpleasant Her golden slipper was lost that night and how difficult it was to get it back as her hands were shaking after the alleged sexual encounter. “She felt ashamed that she couldn't stop it,” she says. testified. Judge Juan Melchan eventually began to support defense objections to Trump's sometimes rambling answers that were unpleasant to him, but he did make important points. The degree of detail means the witness is reliable. (The defense requested a mistrial, arguing that the jury had been irreparably biased by her testimony, but the judge rightly rejected that claim as baseless.)
Corroboration: This witness quickly brought us back to 2016 and a key moment in the case: the ups and downs of negotiating a hush money payment to her that prosecutors say was an illegal campaign contribution. All of these points had already been established through documents and other witnesses, but her testimony confirms them and is expected to come from the biggest remaining witness, former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen. .
CROSS: Like every witness in this trial, the defense, in this case the talented Susan Necheres, delivered the blow. She attacked Daniels' motives, hated Trump, and admitted she owed him a lot of money for losing her defamation lawsuit. More fundamentally, Necheles challenged the credibility of witnesses regarding her 2006 meeting with Trump, noting that Daniels had denied it by 2018. Necheres then accused Daniels of threatening his life in 2011 and other statements made by witnesses. Direct questioning took place before the trial ended that day, and questioning of Daniels was scheduled to resume on Thursday (there is no court on Wednesday).
This was another powerful cross-examination for the defense, but like the previous witnesses, this witness persevered, but the results were not strong enough to throw prosecutors off track. Stormy Daniels' widely anticipated testimony did not disappoint.
