United States: Adult film star Stormy Daniels has built a lucrative business empire around her alleged 2006 sexual encounter with Donald Trump and earned legions of fans for her breezy retorts to those who cast her as an immoral woman.
The alleged encounter is now at the center of the first-ever criminal trial of a former US president, with Daniels, 45, taking the stand for the prosecution on Tuesday.
Trump, 77, is accused of covering up his reimbursement to former lawyer Michael Cohen for a $130,000 payment to Daniels to buy her silence before the 2016 election about the alleged sexual encounter, which took place while he was married to his third wife, Melania.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up the payment, and denies the encounter. Trump’s lawyers unsuccessfully sought to block her testimony, claiming she would tell “contrived stories.”
Daniels has embraced her role as a key antagonist to Trump, the Republican challenger to Democratic President Joe Biden in the Nov. 5 elections.
In a documentary streaming service Peacock launched on March 18, Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, said being at the center of the scandal and receiving frequent vitriolic attacks from Trump supporters online had taken a toll on her emotionally.
That has not stopped her from frequently mocking Trump as well as critics of her line of work. “A major network has spent a lot of money making a documentary about me AND I get to testify against tiny!” she wrote in an apparent reference to Trump in a Feb. 6 social media posts.
“Look at me! Living the American dream while doing a job I love!” Daniels wrote in the reply on the social media platform
The case’s lurid nature has prompted criticism across the political spectrum that the charges brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office are not as serious as Trump’s other state and federal criminal cases, which focus on his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss and his handling of government documents after leaving the White House.
Bragg has countered that the hush money case is about Trump’s alleged scheme to corrupt the 2016 election.
