(NEW YORK) — Former President Donald Trump is on trial in New York City, where he is facing felony charges related to a 2016 hush money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. It marks the first time in history that a former U.S. president has been tried on criminal charges.
Trump last April pleaded not guilty to a 34-count indictment charging him with falsifying business records in connection with a hush money payment his then-attorney Michael Cohen made to Daniels in order to boost his electoral prospects in the 2016 presidential election.
Here’s how the news is developing:
May 09, 7:33 AM
Stormy Daniels to return to the witness stand
Stormy Daniels, the adult film actress whose allegations of a 2006 sexual encounter with Donald Trump prompted the hush money payment that lies at the center of the Manhattan DA’s criminal case against Trump, is scheduled to return to the witness stand this morning.
On Daniels’ first day on the stand on Tuesday, she testified that first met Trump at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe, California, and that he invited her to his hotel suite. Daniels told the jury that when she came out of the bathroom, she found Trump on the bed dressed in only his underwear and a T-shirt.
“The next thing I know, I was on the bed,” said Daniels, who then described how they had sex. Trump has denied that the two ever had a sexual encounter.
Daniels told jurors that she became afraid to go public with her story of the encounter after she was threatened by an unknown man in a Las Vegas parking lot in June 2011. She said that the 2016 offer from then-Trump attorney Michael Cohen to buy her silence for $130,000 on the eve of the 2016 election allowed her to keep the allegations private while profiting from the deal.
“They were interested in paying for the story, which was the best thing that could happen because then my husband wouldn’t find out, but there was still documentation of a money exchange and a paperwork exchange, so that I would be safe and the story wouldn’t come out,” Daniels said.
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