Defense attorneys grilled porn star Stormy Daniels during Donald Trump‘s hush money trial on Thursday about how much money she had raked in after she publicly claimed she once had a sexual encounter with the former president.
Trump’s attorneys highlighted how Daniels published a book, went on a strip club tour, sold merchandise, and released a documentary, all of which featured Trump themes, in the wake of going public with her story about the alleged affair.
The attorneys first noted how Daniels shopped around the story right before the 2016 presidential election before negotiating through a lawyer a deal that involved former Trump attorney Michael Cohen paying her $130,000 to keep quiet about her experience.
“At this point, you were asking for money, you wanted money from President Trump?” Trump attorney Susan Necheles asked, according to reports from the courtroom by CNN.
Daniels denied the claim.
“I was asking to sell my story to publications to get the truth out,” Daniels said.
Necheles pointed out that Daniels approached media outlets, including the website Slate, about Trump right before the election but that Slate would not offer her money for the story.
Daniels was confronted about why she opted to enter into a lucrative nondisclosure agreement with Cohen rather than have her story published in the media.
Daniels said it was “to get my story protected by a paper trail so my family wouldn’t get hurt when the story came out,” adding that a media report would put a target on her.
Necheles then focused on an interview Daniels did in 2018 with 60 Minutes in which Daniels went into extended detail for the first time about her alleged sexual encounter, which she claimed happened at a hotel in 2006.
“You wanted to make more money, right?” Necheles asked about the interview.
“No, that’s why I did 60 Minutes for free,” Daniels responded.
Necheles then pointed out how Daniels was flooded with publicity after the interview and that she raked in nearly $1 million after it, largely from a book deal.
The defense attorney asked Daniels about a slate of other ways she had received income because of Trump.
Daniels, for example, went on a nationwide tour in which she performed as a stripper. Clubs advertised the tour with the tagline “Make America Horny Again,” though Daniels testified that she fought against advertisers using the Trump-aligned slogan.
Daniels also released an eponymous documentary that centered on how her life has been affected by her ties to Trump and she maintains an online store with items that allude to the former president. One such item is a sold-out “Stormy Saint of Indictments” candle.
Daniels repeatedly emphasized that she also had exorbitant legal bills and that her increased income was generally offset by an increase in expenses.
Necheles’s line of questioning came after defense attorneys first began cross-examining Daniels on Tuesday about whether her negotiations to receive the hush money payment amounted to extortion of Trump.
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Defense attorneys have sought to discredit Daniels’s claims that money was not what motivated her to sell her story about Trump.
Trump has been accused by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, an elected Democrat, of falsifying records of the payment to Daniels to hide it after he was elected.
