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CNN Live Event/Special

Stormy Daniels Testifies in Trump Hush Money Trial. Aired 1- 1:30p ET

Aired May 07, 2024 - 13:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[13:00:41]

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: Welcome to our breaking news coverage of the historic Donald Trump hush money criminal trial.

I'm Wolf Blitzer in Washington. Anderson Cooper is just outside the courthouse in New York for us today.

A truly blockbuster witness right at the heart of this case, Stormy Daniels, has been testifying. The adult film star has delivered at times very salacious testimony detailing her first meeting with Trump back in 2006 and their ensuing sexual encounter, which Trump denies.

Ten years later, Daniels was paid to keep quiet about that alleged affair. And that's the payment that launched this case -- Anderson, over to you.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: That's right.

And on its face, that hush money deal was perfectly legal. Prosecutors said the crime was in the bookkeeping, which allegedly involved falsifying records to conceal the nature of the transaction.

I'm here with CNN chief legal affairs correspondent Paula Reid and CNN chief domestic correspondent Phil Mattingly.

Of course, the question is, did Trump know about the way this payment was actually logged in his personal business records?

PAULA REID, CNN CHIEF LEGAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: And, so far, prosecutors have not been able to establish that he had a knowledge of exactly how this was being reimbursed to Cohen. Even if he knew big picture. Did he know about those 34 individual documents that are allegedly falsified?

I think what we got out of Stormy Daniels this morning is the, what did Trump want to hide ahead of the 2016 election? Post-"Access Hollywood," pre-election Day, what was it that he and everyone else was concerned about getting out? That is what Stormy Daniels has given the jury so far, no evidence of falsifying business records.

That's not something she will have knowledge of. And we're just starting to get into the hush money that she received in the days ahead of the election. COOPER: Also, it's going to be interesting, Phil. I mean, does the

jury believe Stormy Daniels in her testimony? And if they believe her, then they don't believe Donald Trump when he says that he did not have sex with her.

And if they don't believe him on that, perhaps that colors the way they believe his testimony in general.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CHIEF DOMESTIC CORRESPONDENT: Right.

And I think one thing that has been interesting throughout the course of the morning -- I think Stormy Daniels has been testifying for a little bit over two hours right now, and in vivid detail, more vivid, I think, than the judge had kind of laid out in terms of the parameters.

You saw the objections, probably more objections and more objections sustained from the defense team than we have seen in the entire trial combined up to this point.

I think those details and the reason why she was being asked about them by the prosecution were to kind of lay out the point that you're making here, that she wouldn't know all of this if it didn't actually happen. The former president denies that this happened in the first place. And, therefore, you should be able to view her as credible.

And I think what's interesting as we head in to the afternoon is where she ended up. She ended up saying that the delays to the money, she attributed them first to Cohen, and then said it was Trump to Cohen to Keith Davidson. And while that line or chain of events may take you back a week or two into the trial, whether or not she has proof to that, to Paula's point, it's been the missing element throughout this.

Who can point directly to the former president and what he knew. She kind of closed things out, saying, I -- my understanding or my belief is that Trump was the reason that this was being delayed.

We have not seen proof of that. We have heard from Davidson. And how she's able to kind of develop that or paint that picture in the afternoon is going to be really important.

COOPER: If I was to have to pick if I wanted to be on the prosecution team or the defense team during this lunch break, I would pick the prosecution team...

REID: Right.

COOPER: ... because I can only imagine. We have seen, based on our reporters in the court, how upset Donald Trump seems to be and urging his attorneys to be interjecting more, to object more.

I have little doubt he is giving them an earful right now about what he wants to see moving forward.

REID: Yes, he's been really scrutinizing his defense lawyers. We saw it yesterday with Todd Blanche's cross of an accounting official from the Trump Organization. Trump twisted his entire body and was watching everything Todd said. Today, he's gotten a little physical with Susan Necheles, one of his lawyers, sort of hitting her on the arm, prompting her to object.

He's had these spirited conversations with all three of them. He clearly has a lot of ideas about exactly how this defense should be carried out. At this point, it's unclear who will cross Stormy Daniels, but you know, whoever does it, they're getting an earful from their client right now.

MATTINGLY: And I think the takeaway, the picture that our team in the room and you guys been talking about of the -- Necheles, the lawyer, being basically prompted to object -- I think she was reading something at the time and was basically -- like, Stormy Daniels is so different than anybody else we have seen up to this point, right?

David Pecker, who I think they were still very friendly to some degree, you had people that ran the Trump Organization, and even -- you had Hope Hicks, who was a former adviser. And, clearly, there's still some kindness there or appreciation for one another.

[13:05:10]

This is a different witness than we have seen up to this point. If you want to have any sense of how Trump is going to feel when Michael Cohen eventually gets on the stand, you're getting a little bit of it here. But we just haven't seen him confronted by somebody like this, particularly with these personal stories at that level of detail.

How he responds after the trial may be just as interesting as how he responds during the trial.

REID: Yes.

COOPER: More from here in New York. Kaitlan Collins is going to be joining us here.

Wolf, let's go back to you.

BLITZER: All right, Anderson, thank you. I have got an excellent panel here in Washington as well.

Elie Honig, let's talk -- start with you.

What stood out to you so far about Stormy Daniels' testimony?

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: So, Wolf, even though this morning was the part about sex, it got into some sordid details, I think that was actually the easier part for Stormy Daniels and for the prosecution.

It seems to me that she's a very credible witness, owing largely to the level of specificity and detail, including some details that did not make her look good. For example, it's a small detail, but she said: "I went through Donald Trump's toiletry bag. I'm not proud of it."

Why would you admit that if you were not telling the truth?

It's hard for me to believe this jury hears that testimony and thinks this is fabricated. But now we're getting into the more relevant parts of her testimony and perhaps the dicier elements of her testimony. For example, right before the lunch break, she said she really wasn't interested in getting money for her story.

Well, she got $130,000 for it, ultimately. And we are coming up to the point where she's going to talk about how she publicly -- here's the quote -- My motivation wasn't money. It was to get the story out."

That's a little hard to square with what ends up happening. So it's going to get bumpier in the afternoon for Stormy Daniels and for the prosecution. But I think the morning went more or less how they would have wanted it to play out.

BLITZER: What do you think, Elliot, because you're watching this very closely as well. How do you think the Trump defense team is going to go after her?

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, I think a few ways.

Number one, they can't say the words porn star enough. And I would think they would use the seedy underbelly of this story to try to taint the jury's mind as to sort of what they think of this witness, number one.

Number two, memory lapses. She's talking and testifying about events that happened in 2006. And it's easy to say, well, what -- what exactly do you remember? Where was the hotel room and so on?

And even little things that might be honest memory lapses for you or me or a regular person, to a jury might appear to be questions about the witness' credibility. And then, finally, the big one is just motive and intent. Why -- picking up on Elie's point. To get the story out is not a good fact for her at all, because it suggests that she is going after this defendant.

And, moreover, the fact that she, I believe, spoke to a publicist after the "Access Hollywood" tape had come out...

GLORIA BORGER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes.

WILLIAMS: ... all of these facts, while, again, not devastating for the witness or the prosecution, just cast some doubt on what the jury might think of this witness. And, again, any responsible defense attorney would pick at all of that.

BLITZER: So far, is she coming across very credible?

WILLIAMS: So far, based on what we're reading, she is coming across as credible.

And I think by -- I think the prosecution had a delicate needle to thread in how much detail to get out there. You don't want to turn the jury off with how disgusting the facts are. But they needed to provide enough information that it became hard for the defense to rebut that it happened.

BORGER: They might have overdone it a little bit.

WILLIAMS: Maybe.

BORGER: Yes.

WILLIAMS: But it's -- but it's really a balance, because if they -- and Elie and I were just talking about this in the break.

If the prosecution were to just come up and say, did you have sex with him that night or that afternoon or whatever, and she said yes, no further questions, the defense could easily rebut that by saying, well, no, it didn't happen. You had -- it was important for them to establish these minor details, such as, I went through and found his Old Spice and Brut in his bag.

Those are helpful details. But you're right. It doesn't sit right with any of us.

BORGER: I think the only thing that was -- she was very credible, except, to me, when she said she didn't care about the money.

WILLIAMS: Yes.

BORGER: Because it's clear she cared about the money. And she was texting, apparently, with the publicist about the money. She was involved in negotiations with "The Enquirer," I gather, about the money.

So, if you wanted to get the story out, why?

WILLIAMS: Yes.

BORGER: For your reputation? To burnish your reputation? I don't think so.

So, there's only one reason, which is to embarrass Donald Trump and to get some financial remuneration, right? I mean, that's the point of it. And she kept saying, no, no, no, no, I didn't care about the money.

WILLIAMS: It seemed clear that at that point she was quite successful, both from her sort of film work, but also directing and so on.

But, for most human beings, $130,000 is a very significant sum of money. The idea...

BORGER: Sure.

(CROSSTALK)

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: But it wasn't just the $130,000.

Also, she talks about the "InStyle" article that she was supposed to get paid for, but she never did.

WILLIAMS: Right.

HOLMES: But I do want to answer one question that you asked Elliot about the defense and the questioning, because I talked to some of Trump's legal team about this.

[13:10:00]

And they want to keep this brief. As you noted, Donald Trump is agitated.

BORGER: Yes.

HOLMES: This is not what he wants to be sitting through right now.

At the time, when the first details of this report came public, he was embarrassed. It was salacious. It put attention and a stress on his marriage with Melania. It is not something he wants to revisit right now.

And you can tell that he is scribbling notes furiously, passing to his lawyers. He doesn't want to be engaged in this, and neither do his lawyers. I am told, though, that, even though they believe it's going to be shorter, the defense is going to be shorter in the cross- examination than what we see from the prosecution, they do want to poke some holes in her story and kind of paint her as what they say the witness that she is.

(CROSSTALK)

HONIG: That's great insight to know that.

And, to that end, I don't actually think they're going to attack her on being a porn star. I disagree -- I disagree with what you said, as a -- but it would be a traditional way to go. I don't think the jury cares. I don't think -- she is. She is what she is. She makes no pains about it.

That's what she is. They're going to call her an opportunist, is what they're going to do.

WILLIAMS: Oh, yes.

BORGER: Yes.

HONIG: And the fact that she specifically linked her request in time to the upcoming election oddly makes her out to be an opportunist, but also oddly helps the prosecution's case, because they're going to say, the reason -- and here's the testimony.

"Absolutely," Daniels said, saying, "If it wasn't done before the election, I wouldn't be safer, that he wouldn't pay, and that there would be a trail to keep me safe."

So, prosecutors are going to say, so this is sort of our theory here. The motivation or a primary motivation for making this payment was, the election was coming up and they wanted to silence her.

BORGER: That she's an -- that she's an extortionist, basically.

HONIG: Yes.

BORGER: I think the question that I have, and maybe the legal eagles here can answer it, is that Donald Trump has always insisted -- and you know this better than anyone, has always insisted on denying that anything took place, that any sexual encounter took place.

Now, how do they or do they counter that, you know, her testimony on that issue. I...

WILLIAMS: No, I think you can acknowledge that the encounter took place, and that's embarrassing to the former president, but doesn't...

BORGER: But he has said publicly that it didn't.

WILLIAMS: But even if it doesn't, what I'm saying is, regardless of whether the encounter took place, the crime is committed with the business and the falsification of records, and perhaps they take one for the team.

I don't know if...

(CROSSTALK)

HONIG: I will tell you what they're going to do.

WILLIAMS: Yes. Yes.

(CROSSTALK)

BORGER: Do they have to address it? I mean...

(CROSSTALK)

HONIG: They don't have to.

WILLIAMS: They don't have to.

HONIG: But I think they will, and here's how.

They're not going to say, you're lying, Stormy Daniels. That never happened. They're going to show her denial.

BORGER: Right.

HONIG: In 2018, she wrote a document, signed a document saying, this never happened. I'm not denying it only because I was paid. It never actually happened.

Now, she has since denied the denial, but that's what they're going to do. They're going to show that document to her.

BORGER: Yes.

HOLMES: And just to your point, I mean, one of the reasons that I have longed said that Donald Trump was not going to testify in this case, no matter how many times that he teased it, was that this is not something he wants to answer questions about.

HONIG: Yes.

BLITZER: How concerned are they in the Trump legal team right now?

HOLMES: I don't know that it's necessarily just concern. This doesn't change the state of the case. There hasn't been anything explosive in it that wasn't known already.

Their concern is still largely how long this is going to take. I think, after we heard Steinglass yesterday saying that he wouldn't be done for another two weeks from today, that kind of got everyone spun up, because they were thinking this was going to be over by next week. That's where their concern is.

But this just personally for the former president is very embarrassing. And, long term, seeing this kind of conversation around Donald Trump, who is now running for president, and an affair with a porn star, something that can be used against him by Democrats in this election, is something that they're thinking about.

BORGER: Can you just imagine on a human level how mortifying this is for him?

BLITZER: Yes.

BORGER: I mean, this is -- she spread out every detail there, some that we didn't want to know...

BLITZER: Yes.

(LAUGHTER)

BORGER: ... and too much information.

But he's sitting there listening to this. I believe Eric Trump is there. I'm sure Melania is probably tuning in a little bit. And he's running for president, and he's listening to this description of a sex act, right, that he had with her and the fact that he followed up with her and continued to have phone calls with her and tried to promise her a job on "The Apprentice," right?

I mean, this is -- this is kind of mortifying.

BLITZER: Yes.

BORGER: And how does he go into some kind of self-denial about this? I don't -- I don't know.

BLITZER: Everybody, stand by.

We have a lot more to cover. Our special coverage of Donald Trump's criminal trial will continue just ahead.

Up next, we will be joined by CNN's Kaitlan Collins, who's been inside the courtroom all morning as Stormy Daniels discussed very salacious details about her alleged affair with the former president.

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COOPER: And welcome back to CNN's special live coverage of week four in the first criminal trial of a former president.

We're on a lunch break right now, so the jury is not there. Court is in recess.

So far today, Donald Trump has been sitting feet away from Stormy Daniels as she recounted the sexual encounter she said that they had in 2006. Trump has repeatedly denied that occurred.

CNN's Kaitlan Collins just emerged from the court.

A lot to talk about. Well, tell everything.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN HOST: I mean, it's hard to even know where to start.

I mean, just to be in that room when she entered -- there was another witness who testified before her this morning. But by that point, we all -- it had been made publicly known that Stormy Daniels was going to be the next witness to be called to testify.

And the attorneys addressed it right at the beginning of court before the jury actually came in. So, it kind of just loomed over that entire testimony. I mean, no one was even really paying attention to what the Penguin Random House employee was saying, because...

COOPER: Although there were a lot of interesting quotes from various books by Trump about how he micromanaged business.

[13:20:03]

COLLINS: Yes.

COOPER: But I hear your point.

COLLINS: And it was -- it was very interesting, but it just had nothing on what was about to come.

COOPER: Right.

COLLINS: And I think everyone understood that.

And when Stormy Daniels walked into that room -- I mean, she later testified that she and Donald Trump have not been in the -- that she had not seen him since 2007, the summer of 2007, when they were in Los Angeles.

COOPER: She walks in from the side and actually walks behind the table where Trump is.

COLLINS: She walks in. The witness walks in from a side entrance. And so Donald Trump is already seated in there with his defense team. So his back is to her.

But she's over at the witness stand, which, as we reported yesterday, you can't actually see the defendant, Donald Trump, from the witness stand, but he has this monitor in front of her. He was watching it very closely. I mean, his eyes were on this monitor almost the entire time.

He was not closing his eyes, like he's been doing in other days of testimony. And there was this one moment where she'd been on the stand briefly just describing who she was, where she grew up, her backstory. And the prosecution asked her to identify Donald Trump.

And she had to kind of stand up in her seat a little bit, and she pointed at him and identified him as the person in the navy jacket. And he looked over towards the witness stand as this happened. It was this remarkable moment where she was just doing something as simple as identifying him.

COOPER: And you -- as you reported yesterday, based on talking to somebody else who had testified previously, the reason people have trouble identifying where Donald Trump is because, from the witness stand, you cannot see the -- you cannot see Donald Trump.

COLLINS: No, because when you -- I looked closer today after a witness who testified in this case told me that.

The judge's bench does extend out so far, and where they're -- they're kind of tucked away over by the jury and looking more directly at the prosecution. And Donald Trump is seated in the middle of his defense table with an attorney to his right.

So it's just -- it's not direct eye contact. That's why Trump's often looking straight ahead at this screen. But, I mean, this is the biggest witness to testify, easily, so far in the 13 days of this trial. I don't think -- I think there was a lot of questions about whether or not she was actually going to take the stand, but the prosecution called her this morning.

I mean, it was the most salacious details that we have seen, as she went into her alleged affair with Donald Trump, which he denies to this day.

COOPER: More salacious, it seemed, than the judge wanted.

COLLINS: More salacious than the judge wanted, because, at times, I mean, she was going into -- not even just salacious. I mean, it was very detail-heavy. This is something that also stood out to me is, Donald Trump has

always denied this affair and said that Stormy Daniels was not his type. He's talked about her a lot in his rallies when I was covering him inside the White House. She laid out so many instances of where -- not only when they met in 2006 at the Lake Tahoe golf tournament and the subsequent conversations she had, other meetings that they had, phone calls where he would call and she put him on speaker.

And there were dozens of witnesses, essentially, to their interactions, her assistant, her publicist. Her boyfriend at one time drove her to an interaction with Donald Trump, where she went and met with him in Beverly Hills, and he waited in the car.

And so it also just speaks to Trump's denials of this. I mean, she had a level of detail about the tile in his hotel room in Lake Tahoe, the double doors, what they were talking about. There were parts where he was muttering to his attorney and looked increasingly irritated as she was continuing to testify about these details of their interactions.

There were moments where, when the jury was out of the room and they took a break, the judge kind of scolded the prosecution and talked about the level of detail that she was going into, saying it wasn't really relevant and that she just needed to directly answer the question.

And twice while she was answering her questions, that was another interaction that happened where he said: "Just directly answer that. You don't have to tell kind of a whole story about it."

COOPER: How did the jury seem to be responding to her?

COLLINS: They were paying really close attention. And she came in.

She was very conversational and casual. She did seem a bit nervous at the beginning. She was speaking very quickly as she was answering her questions, so fast that, on several occasions, the prosecution had to ask her to stop and to slow down, because the court reporters couldn't actually get what she was saying.

And so it was this fascinating moment. And then she was going into all of these details and talking about how Trump never had asked her to keep their affair quiet or to hide it. And they were clearly getting up to the point to where then the "Access Hollywood" tape comes out, and Trump's running for president, and why there was that renewed interest in her story.

COOPER: It seemed like she was making sort of jokes or things -- laughing at things, saying things she thought were funny.

And did the jury respond?

COLLINS: It wasn't -- it wasn't completely clear.

I was in there when Keith Davidson was testifying, and he was kind of this compelling witness. He looked directly at the jury. She was directly addressing the jury as well and trying to be conversational. I mean, she made jokes about the adult film industry and contests that they have, and the irony of them sponsoring certain golf tournaments.

It wasn't clear that the jury was necessarily laughing at it. There was a moment where she was describing her first dinner with Donald Trump. And she had Keith Schiller, his -- everyone who knows Donald Trump and has covered him, this was his longtime bodyguard.

[13:25:00]

She had his contact in her phone and his name was "Keith Trump." That's how she had it saved in her phone, because she didn't know what his last name was. And she was describing going into that dinner, and she didn't necessarily want to go, she said, but her publicist encouraged her to go and said: "What's the worst that could happen?"

And she kind of laughed about that, because she's now in a courtroom testifying about that very dinner and where it led to all of this.

COOPER: Yes.

We have heard from court stenographers asking witnesses to slow down in what they say, but it seemed like that happened a lot. A lot of people were asking her to slow down.

COLLINS: I counted four times where she was asked to slow down, because she was just speaking really quickly.

And there were moments where she was going into incredible detail, including that moment when she met Donald Trump in his hotel in 2006. They were supposed to have dinner. They didn't actually eat dinner, she testified, but she talked about how she went into the bathroom at one point. She was looking through his dock kit that was in the bathroom and what products he had.

And she...

COOPER: Pert shampoo, I believe it was.

COLLINS: Yes. And she -- Old Spice was also one of the products.

And she came out. I mean, I'm telling you, it's this level of detail that she was going into. But she came out. And she said that he was undressed on the bed, that he was in boxers at a T-shirt and that she -- I wrote this down because you could kind of just hear this cacophony of clicks in the courtroom because no phones are allowed.

So everyone's on their phone in there. And she said that it was -- it was like the blood had rushed out of her arms and her legs, that she had been upside down.

That was the feeling that she had of kind of, what did I get myself into? What is this situation that I have -- that I have -- that she made clear he didn't force her to do anything, but she kind of felt like she had put herself in a bad situation by being in his hotel room that night.

COOPER: Yes. Kaitlan Collins, thank you. Fascinating to get those little details.

Ahead, more of our special coverage of this trial and the testimony of Stormy -- Stormy Daniels. We will speak with a judge to get their take on what we have seen so far in the courtroom.

Stay with us.

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