For three weeks, witness after witness in Donald J. Trump’s criminal trial has spoken the name of Stormy Daniels, the porn star whose claim of a sexual encounter with the former president is at the center of the case. Today, jurors are hearing from her.
Ms. Daniels was called by prosecutors to take the witness stand in the Manhattan courtroom on Tuesday to testify against Mr. Trump. It was her first time relaying her account while in the same room as Mr. Trump since her story of the encounter and a subsequent $130,000 payment to buy her silence became public six years ago.
Ms. Daniels appeared nervous on the stand, speaking so quickly that at times it was difficult to understand her words. She began by talking about her difficult upbringing in Louisiana before turning to how she met Mr. Trump for the first time in 2006 at a golf tournament in Lake Tahoe, Nev.
She testified that Mr. Trump sought to have dinner with her there and that his bodyguard, Keith Schiller, took down her phone number. At the time, Mr. Trump was 60, and she was 27.
Ms. Daniels asked her publicist about attending dinner with him, and the publicist responded, “What could possibly go wrong?” They met at his hotel suite, where he wore pajamas before dinner, she said, recounting in detail the layout of the room.
During her testimony, Mr. Trump both whispered into the ear of his lawyer, Todd Blanche, and leaned back in his chair, his eyes closed.
Much about that hush-money payment just before the 2016 election has been laid out in court from people who had key roles in the payment, as well as those on the periphery. They have described the mad scramble by Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former fixer, to buy her silence before the election and Mr. Trump’s reimbursement of him while in the White House. Now, Ms. Daniels gets to tell her side of the story.
Ms. Daniels, 45, was born Stephanie Clifford and raised in Baton Rouge, La. She said her encounter with Mr. Trump happened in July 2006, after he became a television star with his reality show, “The Apprentice.”
They met at the booth for a porn label, Wicked Pictures, at a golf tournament in Nevada, and there is a picture of them together there. Afterward, she said, he invited her to his hotel suite, and they had sex. He also invited her to appear on “The Apprentice,” she said, but she never did.
Ms. Daniels has said they kept in contact over the following years. Mr. Trump even had a nickname for her, she said: “Honeybunch.”
They were reunited in a very different way in 2016. Ms. Daniels wanted to go public about her encounter with Mr. Trump, a potentially devastating revelation for the Republican front-runner in the 2016 election. Her lawyer, Keith Davidson, told jurors in earlier testimony that he had alerted an editor at The National Enquirer, the tabloid publication known for reporting and trading in celebrity news.
But The Enquirer had already paid out hush-money deals for two other potentially damaging stories about Mr. Trump, and its publisher at the time, David Pecker, said he did not have the appetite to make a deal for Ms. Daniels. He was not a bank, he testified.
That’s when Mr. Trump’s fixer heard of her claim and rushed to bury it just days before 2016 election. Mr. Cohen created a limited liability company, took out a $130,000 home equity credit line and sent her the money. Mr. Cohen has not yet testified, but several witnesses have said that he is not a generous person and most likely would not have made the payment to Ms. Daniels without Mr. Trump’s direction and approval.
After Mr. Trump won the election and moved into the White House, Mr. Cohen met with Mr. Trump in the Oval Office in early 2017 and asked to be repaid for the deal. Checks began flowing to Mr. Cohen, which were recorded as “legal expenses” in the Trump Organization ledgers.
Prosecutors say the mislabeling was meant to conceal the hush-money deal, and they underpin the 34 felony counts against Mr. Trump.