Stormy Daniels Leaves Stand After Hours of Searing Testimony

NEW YORK — During more than seven hours of searing testimony spread over two days, Stormy Daniels recounted under oath a one-night sexual encounter she said she’d had with Donald Trump, described taking a $130,000 payment in return for her silence, and swung between defiance and vulnerability in the face of combative questions from his lawyers.

“You made all this up, right?” a lawyer for Trump asked, to which Daniels responded with a forceful “No.” And when the lawyer suggested that Daniels, a porn actor, had experience with “phony stories about sex,” she responded that the sex in such films is “very much real, just like what happened to me in that room.”

Here’s what to know:

— Key testimony: Daniels was often times defiant during her testimony, including when the defense attacked her for hawking merchandise to supporters. She responded by likening it to Trump’s own merchandising. But at other times, Daniels was seemingly on the verge of tears. Asked by a prosecutor, Susan Hoffinger, about the effect these events had on her life, Daniels said she’d had to hire security, move several times and take extra precautions because of her daughter. Asked if publicly telling the truth had been a net positive or net negative for her, she responded, “Negative.”

— Credibility attacked: The lawyer for Trump, Susan Necheles, spent more than two hours Thursday attempting to undermine Daniels’ credibility, including her reasons for accepting the hush-money payment from Trump’s one-time fixer, Michael Cohen. The lawyer accused Daniels of being motivated by greed, which Daniels denied, although she acknowledged accepting Cohen’s offer because she was “running out of time,” an apparent reference to the looming election.

— The payment is central to the case: The 34 felony counts of falsifying business records against Trump stem from his repayment of Cohen after he became president and the recording of the checks as “legal expenses” at the Trump Organization. Trump, 77, has denied any wrongdoing. If convicted, he could face prison or probation.

— More testimony: The witness who followed Daniels, Rebecca Manochio, a junior bookkeeper at Trump’s company, described how during his presidency she would mail him checks that needed his signature. She described working for Jeffrey McConney, the Trump Organization corporate controller who testified earlier in the trial that most of the reimbursements to Cohen came from Trump’s personal bank account.

— Daniels, Day 1: On Tuesday, her first day on the stand, Daniels described — sometimes graphically and often hastily — having a liaison with Trump in 2006 after a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe, Nevada. Trump has long denied having had sex with Daniels.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.