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Judge Denies Trump Attorney's Motion For Mistrial; Stormy Daniels Resumes Testimony In Trump Hush Money Trial. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired May 07, 2024 - 14:30   ET

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

[14:30:00]

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN HOST: And she, Stormy Daniels, said that Trump told her, well, don't worry about that, we don't sleep in the same -- we don't even sleep in the same room.

At that, Trump kind of had this scowl on his face. And I should note, he was looking in her direction, we are told, as she was making her way back to the witness stand.

I mean, he has been paying attention to this testimony like no other in this trial so far.

PAULA REID, CNN CHIEF LEGAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Today is definitely different when it comes to his demeanor. Yesterday, two Trump Organization officials, who had potentially very consequential testimony, he was lounging back in his chair with his eyes closed. Was somewhat interested in his lawyer during direct cross.

But today, as you saw, as we're getting these reports -- I mean, he is so actively involved in directing his attorneys, prompting objections, of watching her on the screen.

This is the most he's been involved, not only with watching the witness, but with his own defense so far in this trial.

COLLINS: When -- obviously, I think one point they know that the defense is going to make it is that she benefited financially from this agreement that she struck.

Right before she left the witness stand, she told the jury she was not motivated by money, that she was motivated by wanting to get her story out there.

But I also noticed, at one point, though, she talked how she stopped doing her podcasts that she had. She said she was fired from it. And the prosecutors asked her why.

She said the only line of questioning they wanted to talk about on the podcast was this story, this case, this allegation, or her story about her affair with Donald Trump.

And that, essentially, she wasn't interested in. She wanted to explore the topics. It seemed to be trying to cut at, well, she also suffered potentially financially as well. PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR & CHIEF DOMESTIC CORRESPONDENT: How they swear kind of the last 15 minutes before the lunch break of her testimony, it's going to be interesting to me where she said, first, she wanted to get her story out. Then she didn't want to get her story out.

It was because of fear. It wasn't because of money. And then who was actually -- what was her understanding about who was actually holding things up? Was it Michael Cohen or was it Donald Trump directing Michael Cohen.

And I think there are a couple of things, a couple of elements -- there's less than -- because we've got to get what actually matters here to some degree in terms of the legality that's been alleged, where, how they take that, how they kind of actually smooth out what seemed to be some divergent stories towards the end there.

It's going to be absolutely critical because, again, as lurid and almost visceral this morning was, this is the part that really matters. This is where they're able to prove whether or not, or at least continue to flesh out details of the actual allegations of the actual charges here.

COLLINS: Yes. And "The Apprentice" kept coming up. She was saying, you know, when they first met that they we're talking get her appearing on "The Apprentice."

But she reversed what -- what the argument always is from Trump people, in Trump world, that she was seeking him out to be on the show. She says it was the reverse, that he was bringing it up to her and kept saying, oh, well, I'm asking, I'm getting overruled.

And essentially, you know, the last time -- one of the last times they spoke was him telling her that she wasn't going able to be on the show.

REID: Yes. And in her documentary, she talks about this at length. And this is why she kept up their relationship after that alleged encounter in the hotel.

Now, right now, prosecutors are asking Daniels to read an email from her lawyer, Keith Davidson, sent to Michael Cohen on October 17, 2016. Daniels said she authorized Davidson to cancel the deal because the funds hadn't been set.

So they're talking -- so they were talking about the pressure on that point. But "The Celebrity Apprentice," that was significant because she says that was something that she really wanted. And that was her big incentive to keep up contact with Trump until it was clear she wasn't going to get it. And then she cut it off.

And if you watch the documentary, you can see, on balance, I mean, her ability to support herself. She's hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. She has been arguably negatively impacted at this point by everything that's transpired. COLLINS: Yes. And now we'll get into the nitty-gritty of this

transaction with Michael Cohen and Keith Davidson, and ultimately Donald Trump.

Stormy Daniels is now back on the witness stand. She is reading an email where her attorney, Keith Davidson, told Michael Cohen, his client, Stormy Daniels, deemed the settlement deal canceled and that Davidson no longer represented her.

Much more on the evidence that is being shown to the jury right now. Our special coverage continues right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:38:30]

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: Welcome back. We're following all the breaking news in Donald Trump's criminal hush money trial.

The adult film star, Stormy Daniels, is back on the stand after the judge denied a motion for mistrial over her explicit testimony.

She's now being asked specifically about the non-disclosure agreement she signed.

My panel is here. And let's discuss the latest developments.

Overall, Elie, give me your bottom-line sense. Is she credible as a witness?

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: I do think, for the most part, she's credible. I think the level of detail she went into was compelling.

And now what prosecutors are trying to do is support her with documentation. For example, it looks like now they just were talking about the non-disclosure agreement, the actual piece of paper that was signed between the parties where Stormy Daniels would get paid $130,000 in exchange for her silence.

She testified about this. She said that the name you see there, Peggy Peterson, was a pseudonym. Not much of a pseudonym, though, because right under it says, "AKA" --

(LAUGHTER)

HONIG: -- "also known as Stephanie Clifford, AKA, Stormy Daniels."

But they did this because it was a secret agreement. Donald Trump, by the way, did not sign that. David Denison was his stage name, so to speak.

I do think Stormy Daniels' story is sensational as it is. It's largely credible. It's hard for me to see this jury saying we think she made all that up about the hotel. But again, when we get into the part where she's shopping her story

and her motives, at that point, she's made some contradictory and harder-to-believe statements.

BLITZER: So you mentioned the $130,000 that she collected. Michael Cohen sent her, the money, $130,000, as part of the agreement, the non-disclosure agreement. Was that income? Did she need to declare that as income when she filed her income tax?

[14:40:04]

HONIG: It's such an interesting question because I'm -- to give you two examples. On the one hand, if she was in a car accident and injured, and then was paid $130,000 through a legal settlement, not taxable, right? She's just being made whole.

If on the other hand, she was paid $130,000 for a photo shoot, that would be income. That would be taxable.

The way they paper -- the way they made this settlement appear, was if she was being paid for a legal suit, more like a car accident where she's being reimbursed.

You can question whether that's legitimate and fair. But because of the way they structured it, probably not taxable.

And it's worth noting, she just testified, of the $13,000, once her attorney and publicists took their cut, she said she only cleared about $96,000 for herself.

BLITZER: And I assume she didn't declare $96,000 --

HONIG: I believe that's --

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: -- as income.

HONIG: Right. I think that's correct.

BLITZER: What do you think?

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: No, I think so. And again, there was some dispute about this very question last week in the testimony as to whether, is this a payment for someone's silence or is it -- if you remember, there was a discussion about the word "consideration" --

BLITZER: For a story.

WILLIAMS: Right, exactly. Remember, there was the use the word "consideration." I believe, Jeff McConney -- I can't remember who it was, forgive me.

But is it "consideration" for an agreement where a thing is being exchanged pursuant to a contract. And because of the fact that it does not appear that she treated it as such, she probably didn't pay taxes on it.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, you know, she's also talking about in court right now about how the payments we're late. And she, at one point, decided that the contract was null and void because she wasn't getting the money.

And we know from the other side of it in the other testimony we've heard that Michael Cohen was panicked because he couldn't get the money from the bank. He couldn't pay Stormy. It was right before the election and he wanted to quash the story.

So she was saying, well, you know, I really wasn't getting the money. This wasn't working out. And of course, Michael Cohen was desperately, desperately trying to get her the money. And he knew he was -- he was late in getting it.

HONIG: Yes, this is a moment of mutual panic.

BORGER: Exactly.

HONIG: Stormy Daniels and Keith Davidson, her lawyer, are panicked they're not going to get paid. Michael Cohen has panicked because he wants to silence her before the election. This is, of course, when he --

(CROSSTALK)

BORGER: He wants to pay her.

HONIG: And Cohen is trying to work out, on the other side, am I going to get paid back for this or not with Donald Trump? We will hear him testify about this moment as well.

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: Yes, that's going to be important.

Let me ask you, are we getting any reaction from the Trump campaign yet to Stormy Daniels testimony?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: No. It's the same as what I've said before. They -- they know they don't want to be sitting there. They want to be ignoring this.

I mean, I was talking to one adviser earlier. He was joking about the fact that they're trying to run a campaign and the most fascinating part of it right now is that the former president is sitting in a trial about a porn star.

So they're aware of what's going on here. The bigger concern -- again, and they're not going to comment on Stormy Daniels directly. But the bigger concern here, again, is how does this play out in the actual campaign? How does this actually play out with voters?

And when I talked earlier about how the defense does not want to drag out their cross-examination, part of that is because they don't really want all of these details coming up.

They don't want more details. They don't want her telling more of the story. Because the more details there are, as we saw this morning, the more salacious it is.

And even you saw Trump's lawyers saying that because there were so many details because of what the details were that she was saying that there should be a mistrial.

It's that they don't want this out there. They want this to be over.

WILLIAMS: Yes, and I think there's an -- often an impulse for many attorneys, often more junior ones, to keep going and hammering on a cross-examination because that's what you think you do. You fight your case and your cause.

And at a certain point, number one, it's counterproductive in front of the jury. But also, you're not extracting or enlisting additional information. At a certain point, it's best to save the argument for the closing argument -- for your close where you -- where you argue to the jury, this is what you should draw from the testimony.

BLITZER: And we just heard on the witness stand and after the "Wall Street Journal" article ran on January 12, 2018, Stormy Daniels says her life turned into chaos. That was the article that first reported a lot of this.

WILLIAMS: Yes. Again, it's hard to know what -- are you wading back into territory that ought not? Because there are a few dangerous places to go after that where, if the prosecutor's not careful, you start bringing in ancillary information about how this all affected that person.

Now, to Elie's point a moment ago, all of this talks about, speaks to the chaos and panic mode in -- in every camp, in Stormy Daniels' camp, in Donald Trump's camp, and among with Michael Cohen himself. And so that supports that.

HONIG: You all remember this moment in 2018 when this article came out. She said, suddenly, I was front and foremost everywhere. People on the front lawn. Blew my cover I guess, for lack of a better way of explaining.

What I'm really looking at now is, they're building towards this -- there's this moment when she signs this statement, saying, I did not have sex with Donald Trump. They're going to ask her, why did you sign that if it wasn't true?

I assume she's going to say I felt like I was under pressure. I was feeling threatened.

[14:45:00]

And now, getting into her controversial appearance on the Jimmy Kimmel show where he asks her, is this true or not? And she gives sort of coy, ambiguous responses. (CROSSTALK)

HOLMES: -- she's already signed that response. Because, remember, he brings up the letter. And that's when they have that kind of coy thing, oh, that's not my signature. So she had already signed this.

So she'd said -- they did bring it up briefly in terms of why she signed this letter in the first place. And she said she didn't want to sign it. But that's really all the detail that we've had so far come out as to why she actually --

(CROSSTALK)

BORGER: The question is whether the prosecution is going to get out of Stormy Daniels the answer to the question of whether this was a campaign contribution and how she viewed it, and how they viewed it.

Because that's the sort of basis for the case. Right? And you know, she -- I don't know if she can even answer that question.

She did talk about how it was -- you know, she knew that if you did it after the election, she would lose her leverage. But how do you get to Stormy Daniels saying, I believe this was for the benefit of the campaign?

BLITZER: She just said, Stormy Daniels, "I was not to discuss the relationship or NDA," the non-disclosure agreement. "The appearance was to give an example of how I could go on and do promotions and things and not break the NDA." That's what she just said.

All right. Everybody standby. Because there's a lot of dramatic developments unfolding right now. So far, the most dramatic day of testimony in this case. It will continue with more on Stormy Daniels' testimony.

Stay with us. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:50:56]

COLLINS: Welcome back to CNN's special live coverage of day 13 of Donald Trump's criminal hush money trial.

Right now, Stormy Daniels is back on the stand talking about what's at the heart of this, this agreement that she struck to keep quiet in order to not go public with her story in exchange for $130,000.

I had the privilege to be in the courtroom this morning, where the testimony was uncomfortable at times, certainly graphic, as Daniels went into great detail about her encounters with Donald Trump long before he was president. It had been 17 years since they'd actually come face to face.

She talked about how he called her Honey Bunch. She talked about how she'd put it on speakerphone when he called her after they first met at Lake Tahoe in 2006.

She talked about that night when they met. And she even mimicked his pose that he was making, that, she said, when she came out of the bathroom to find him on the bed in his hotel room.

It was a testimony that Trump's attorneys complained about when they returned to the courtroom. They even asked for a mistrial but the judge declined to grant them one.

And he did instruct them about the parameters of where they can go with the testimony for Stormy Daniels this afternoon.

I want to bring in retired federal judge, Nancy Gertner, who is here with us.

Because, Judge Gertner, we have been looking at the decision that this judge has been faced with. He's been faced with many of them since this trial started.

And I should note, right now, that inside that courtroom, they are talking about that non-disclosure agreement that Stormy Daniels had signed and how she was upset when the story became public because Michael Cohen could be out there talking about it. She could not.

But first, just on what has happened just a few moments ago, what do you make of Judge Merchan's decision not to declare a mistrial here?

NANCY GERTNER, RETIRED FEDERAL JUDGE: Well, I think what he was saying is not get -- I don't think they necessarily heard the end of it. Essentially, the complaints, as I understand it, was that Stormy Daniels' testimony was more graphic and more salacious than they had agreed upon it would be.

And it's really not the fact of the affair, is really the issue, not the content of it.

And in fact, in some respects, even if she we're getting her story -- selling her story and it wasn't true, as with the doorman, it would suggest that the details of this are less important than the fact that she sold it to -- you know, to -- to Cohen, who then paid her to keep her mouth shut.

In other words, there were guardrails. You don't have to go into these details. This is not about rape. This is not about a sexual assault case. This is about a payoff to keep you silent.

The problem, as I understand it, that he was focused on, that the judge was focused on is whether the lawyers had objected. Presumably, this went on over a period of time. And if this was really going in a direction that they didn't want it, they could object, go to sidebar, move to strike, ask for a recess.

COLLINS: Yes.

GERTNER: There are all some things that they could do to prevent the damage, if damage took place. And as I understand it, the judge was saying, where were you when all of this -- how come you didn't do any of that?

COLLINS: And --

GERTNER: Sometimes -- sometimes lawyers can try to sort of --

(CROSSTALK)

GERTNER: Yes.

COLLINS: Yes, Judge, I was in the room. There were multiple objections from Trump's team. There were periods, though, where they were -- they weren't objecting.

But there were multiple objections, which the judge sustained. They actually had a surprising, the rate of success that Susan Necheles, Trump's attorney, was having. Because she hasn't been all that successful or they have not been all that successful with their objections in the past.

He -- he was agreeing with them on a lot of them. He was clearly uncomfortable with it.

But on, right now, what they're discussing is Stormy Daniels' previous denials of any relationship or affair with Donald Trump.

But if you're the jury the room and she's explaining that, I wonder how vital you think that testimony is.

GERTNER: Well, I think -- you know, the -- both the details -- going into details in a way that you don't have to, there could be those on the jury, say enough already. We don't need this. We don't need this to what is in front of us.

Her denials could -- obviously could cast doubt on her credibility.

[14:55:01]

But you know, again, we have an example of the three payoffs with non- disclosure agreements. One that was -- that David Pecker was involved in, which was the doorman, who actually lied about whether that -- you know, just telling a story which wasn't true.

So to some degree, the truth and falsity is less significant than the fact that Trump was concerned enough about it to pay her off.

So there really was no need to go into this kind of detail. It could go -- it could wind up having a bad effect on the jury.

And then if you add to that concerns about how she denied the affair, then there may be reasons for that, but denied it, that can undermine the way that the jury sees her in this case.

COLLINS: Do you think there's a risk here for the prosecution in bringing her as a witness?

GERTNER: I think that they had to. Because I think that the jury would have wanted to hear this. I think that they had to. There -- but really there is a risk -- there's a risk of the detail that I understand she went through.

On the one hand, details support the notion that it took place. You know, that gives you -- if you remember all of that, then that suggests that you are actually there.

On the other hand, if you've made the jury uncomfortable, because it seemed like piling on, then that would be an issue.

There's a lot going on in just a few minutes. And then when you said that the lawyers objected, the defense lawyers objected to some and then stop objecting, that also could be a strategic decision.

Which is that you don't want to highlight the testimony. If you're jumping up and down and screaming about it, then you wind up highlighting it more than it would otherwise be. So they may have done this as a strategic matter.

COLLINS: Yes.

GERTNER: And then there are defense lawyers who can invite a mistrial. It didn't work in this case. But they can invite a mistrial by objecting to some, but not everything in the hopes that the witness will go too far.

I would imagine that the issue will be raised again and that he'll be -- the judge will be asked to revisit it.

COLLINS: Judge Gertner, as always, it's great to have your perspective on these key decisions.

I should note, right now, Stormy Daniels is being asked about her interactions with Michael Avenatti. She's saying that he is no longer her attorney, something that she said with emphasis.

Obviously, Michael Avenatti currently in prison. After talking about a previous instance where she and Donald Trump -- or she and Michael Avenatti took Donald Trump to court over defamation lawsuits, something that they lost.

Much more ahead as Stormy Daniels is back on the stand, as our continued special coverage of Donald Trump goes on right after a quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)