Legal experts hammer Stormy Daniels’ testimony at Trump trial: ‘Disastrous’ responses will ‘backfire’
Some legal experts and pundits have questioned whether Stormy Daniels' testimony and cross-examination damaged her credibility, and wondered whether Trump's team could use it.
Stormy Daniels' testimony Tuesday in the New York v. Trump case came under fire from legal experts, with some arguing her editorializing and loathing of the former president damaged her credibility.
MSNBC legal analyst Danny Cevallos said Daniels' testimony turned the trial of former President Trump "into a quasi-sex assault case," giving his legal team an opening for appeal.
"You always ask the question, can you get this information from a less risky witness?" he said.
"Stormy Daniels is one of those witnesses that tends to not just answer the question asked, but add her own editorial. And that is a really dangerous thing, I promise you. The prosecution is sitting at their desk saying, ‘Just answer the question, please. Just answer the question,’" Cevallos continued.
Cevallos also said her testimony could have been accomplished by her saying just three words, "we had sex," and added the rest was likely unnecessary.
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Trump is charged with falsifying business documents related to an alleged hush money payment to Daniels about a tryst she says they had in 2006. Trump has denied an affair with Daniels, which would have occurred shortly after he married his current wife Melania.
Daniels took the stand on Tuesday and gave a highly detailed account of having sex with Trump at a Lake Tahoe hotel room that year. Daniels was described in trial media reports as talking fast, making jokes and often going beyond directly answering questions she was asked; Judge Juan Merchan at one point told prosecutors their witness was going into "unnecessary" detail.
CNN legal analyst Elliot Williams said Wednesday that Daniels could have damaged the prosecution's case by revealing she hated Trump, and noted her testimony would be used against them in the Trump team's closing statements.
"I think she may have done damage to the prosecution’s case by virtue of the fact that she just couldn‘t stop saying stuff, and so that’s going to backfire on them," CNN justice correspondent Evan Perez added.
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Williams acknowledged that ultimately, Daniels had to take the stand because the existence of the alleged sexual encounter was at the center of the case, the first-ever criminal trial for a former U.S. president.
CNN's Elie Honig said her responses under cross-examination by Trump's team called her credibility into question.
"Her responses were disastrous," Honig said, referring also to the moment when Daniels said she hated Trump.
"When the witness hates the person whose liberty is at stake, that’s a big damn deal!" Honig said. "And she’s putting out tweets, fantasizing about him being in jail. That really undermines the credibility."
Daniels has made multiple posts about Trump on social media, including writing that she "will go to jail" before she has to "pay a penny" to Trump.
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"The fact that she owes him $500,000 by order of a court, owes Donald Trump a half million dollars, and said, ‘I will never pay him. I will defy a court order.' The defense is gonna say, ‘She’s willing to defy a court order. She’s not willing to respect an order from a judge. Why is she gonna respect this oath she took?’ So, I thought it went quite poorly on cross-exam," the analyst said.
"The View" co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin, a former Trump aide who now opposes him, also questioned Daniels' credibility.
"I actually don't believe she needed to go into salacious detail. I would have liked to hear from Stormy, who is a mom, who wants to live a private life, wants to put this behind her, has been exploited by countless men in her life," Griffin said. "She was there under subpoena just to confirm what she is able to."
"I think it hurt her credibility and she is a credible person," Griffin said before noting she believed Daniels' story.
The other co-hosts of "The View" argued Daniels' testimony was credible.
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"It's just his word against her word, so now does he testify? No, I doubt that," co-host Sunny Hostin said. "But does the jury believe her? And it was all about credibility. And that’s why Trump’s lawyers were hammering her and hammering her and hammering her but if you listen to some of the reporters in the courtroom, they're like, she seemed pretty believable. She seemed pretty credible."
Co-host Sara Haines also said she was believable.
"I think that Stormy Daniels’ testimony was big because, as someone who is numbed over watching this … Stormy Daniels was enough for me to tune in because I do find her credible and I do think it mattered," she said.
The Washington Post's report on Daniels' testimony also pointed to her descriptions suggesting she hadn't fully consented to the encounter, saying they could be deemed prejudicial for the jury. The outlet also reported this might give the presumptive GOP nominee's team opportunity for appeal.
Daniels has never alleged Trump forced himself on her but she testified there was a power "imbalance" and she was left "shaking" afterward.
Trump is on trial in Manhattan and has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records related to the alleged payments to Daniels.
Fox News' Jeffrey Clark and David Rutz contributed to this report.