Stormy Daniels Tells Jury About Trump Encounter

Stormy Daniels did indeed take the stand on Tuesday, recounting for jurors her 2006 encounter with Donald Trump in Lake Tahoe, reports the Hill. The adult-film star says she had dinner with Trump in his hotel room before having sex, though he has denied the latter. Daniels is central to the case, because she received $130,000 a decade later from Trump "fixer" Michael Cohen in exchange for keeping quiet about the alleged tryst. Prosecutors say Trump illegally covered up the reimbursement to Cohen amid his 2016 campaign. From the first part of her testimony:

• Daniels told the court she used the bathroom after dinner and came out expecting to leave, but Trump was sitting on the hotel bed in his boxer shorts and a T-shirt, between her and the door, per the New York Times. "What did I misread to get here," she remembers thinking.
• "There was an imbalance of power for sure," Daniels says, per CNN. "He was bigger and blocking the way." However, she added, "I was not threatened verbally or physically." She was 27 at the time, with Trump more than three decades her senior, notes NBC.
• "Did you at some point end up on the bed having sex with him?" asked prosecutor Susan Hoffinger. Yes, replied Daniels. She said she never said "no" at any point, "because I didn't say anything at all." Afterward, she said she "left as fast as I could," telling the court that her hands were shaking so much it was difficult to put her shoes on.
• She said Trump did not ask her to keep the encounter confidential. But "I told very few people that we had actually had sex because I felt ashamed that I didn't stop it." She said she agreed to meet Trump the following day at a night club, where he introduced her to football player Ben Roethlisberger.

• Earlier, Trump was seen shaking his head when Daniels told the court how she asked about Trump's wife, Melania. "We don't sleep in the same room," she recalls him responding.
• Daniels was asked more than once to slow down, including by the judge, because she was speaking so quickly it was difficult to understand her.
• She said Trump initially greeted her in his hotel suite in satin pajamas and she remembers joking, "Does Mr. Hefner know you stole his pajamas?" per the AP.
• She said Trump asked her questions about the porn industry and suggested she appear on his show The Apprentice. He had asked her to dinner earlier that day after running into her at a celebrity golf tournament, she told the court.

(More Stormy Daniels stories.)