Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Live Event/Special

Stormy Daniels Being Cross-Examined In Trump Hush Money Trial. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired May 07, 2024 - 15:30   ET

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

[15:30:00]

PAULA REID, CNN CHIEF LEGAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Heard from Trump organization employees, Hope Hicks, one of his longtime closest advisors, though they are now estranged. But this is someone who's saying on the stand, do I hate the defendant? Yes. Yes, I do.

That's remarkable, right? The jury is going to hear that. And that's really going to paint how they hear everything she talked about this morning.

Now, really why this is significant is because this is a preview of how they're going to cross Michael Cohen. Stormy Daniels does not make or break the prosecution's case. Michael Cohen will. And if you think that reading a couple of tweets about an orange turd, right, that's a little shocking. I mean, we're going to get hours and hours of that during the Michael Cohen cross.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Because Michael Cohen has spoken so much. And he's been very clear as well about how he feels about the defendant.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CHIEF DOMESTIC CORRESPONDENT AND ANCHOR: Right. And I think Paul's spot on in saying this is a preview, but it is going to be like multiply this by about 100. And that's where you're going to be with Michael Cohen.

And to be clear, we've been talking about how the prosecution is trying to get in front of this particular cross. They've been trying to get in front of everything related to Michael Cohen over the course of the entirety of this trial. I think the only thing that's agreement on at this point is that everybody agrees that Michael Cohen isn't the greatest guy in the world and probably doesn't have a great reputation.

That's been by design. I think what's fascinating here is you understand and it's been clear throughout as they've gone back and forth in defense of the prosecution, they got an audience of 12. Right.

And it's not -- it doesn't matter necessarily what this means for the specific allegations or for what Stormy Daniels testified this morning. It matters how jurors perceive this as they walk out once this is all over with. And I'll also be fascinated to see if the prosecution comes back after this. They have to have the facts. KEILAR: That's exactly right. What does redirect look like, Paula?

REID: So for redirect, first of all, they're going to have to clean up these comments that she is making about dancing if he's going to jail. Right. If she hates him, that's one thing. But they're also trying to argue that she has some sort of motivation to get him convicted because she wants to see him behind bars. They're going to have to go to that.

The fact that she hasn't paid him hundreds of thousands of dollars that a court has ordered her to pay. Well, that's just a fact. There's only so much you can do there.

But we we've just gotten started with cross. So they're absolutely going to have to likely do redirect to try to rehabilitate some of the things that are coming out of her mouth. Her demeanor also not great.

She's combative. She's almost yelling for different than what we saw this morning with prosecutors who she knows and she's more comfortable with.

KEILAR: Even with them. She was meandering. So she's having some issues, right, of how she kind of stays in a lane here.

If you guys can just stand by for me, I want to bring in Sarah Matthews, who's a former Trump White House deputy press secretary. As we're watching what is happening here, some very contentious moments, Sarah, with Stormy Daniels facing cross-examination. I wonder what you think, especially as a former communications official in the White House, where always top of mind, I think, was how the president was feeling about what was being said about him.

How you think it has been for him to listen to Stormy Daniels' testimony?

SARAH MATTHEWS, FORMER TRUMP WHITE HOUSE DEPUTY PRESS SECRETARY: Yes, I think today has been a really tough day for him in court. Look in other witness testimonies, he has been kind of falling asleep or as he put it recently, just closing his beautiful blue eyes and taking it in. But he hasn't been as engaged.

But with this testimony in particular, he has been much more engaged and infuriated by it. And I think that that's very clear. And the jury is probably taking notice of that as well.

Look, I believe it was reported that Trump even kind of hit his one attorney at one time to get her attention, to try to get her to object to something. And so Donald Trump is definitely not happy about how today's testimony went. A lot of those, you know, personal details that came out during Stormy Daniels' testimony and the salacious nature of it all, I think that that goes both ways.

And maybe the jury is seeing that clearly they have some sort of history and that he's upset by her sharing these things. Or it could go the way to that as the defense is arguing that he's upset because of his wife and how he wanted to hide this affair from her or, you know, as Donald Trump claims, it didn't happen.

But I think that he doesn't like not being in control. And so being in this courtroom today for this testimony has been extremely difficult for him. And I would certainly not want to be any of his lawyers or his campaign team who he's more than likely lashing out at.

KEILAR: And I think it's clear we've heard this story before. We have. Right. But there are a lot of people, the jury, of course, and then people who may be paying attention to some of these details for the first time, Sarah, who are just now experiencing them for the first time.

I wonder specifically if you had to think of something that you heard of today that would have been, you know, the worst thing for Trump to hear, what that would have been in your mind.

MATTHEWS: I think there are a couple of things that really stuck out to me. I think the comment that Stormy Daniels made when she asked about Melania to him, that was particularly damning because she claims that Donald Trump said to her, oh, well, don't worry about her. We don't even sleep in the same bedroom.

[15:35:00]

And I think for his defense, then that just goes to show that it kind of flies in the face of their argument that he wanted to cover up this affair because he didn't want to upset his wife, that it didn't have anything to do with the campaign. And so I think that that was probably something that he was pretty agitated by.

But then if I'm also a voter sitting at home listening to the salacious details of Stormy Daniels testimony, I think some of the things that shed some light on this affair that maybe kind of stuck out to me was just putting in perspective Stormy Daniels age at the time when this happened. I believe she was 27 years old. Donald Trump would have been in his 60s.

And so just kind of putting that into context, I don't know if that necessarily helps him win over the voters that he's going to need most, which is independent suburban women who maybe are already on the fence about Donald Trump because of his character. And so just hearing all of these kind of icky details, I don't know if it necessarily sways them to want to support him.

KEILAR: All right, Sarah. Great to have your perspective. Sarah Matthews, thank you so much for that. We appreciate it.

And testimony continuing in former President Trump's Hush Money trial. We're up more on what is coming out of that courtroom. We're watching it right now as the defense attorney is returning to talking about Daniel's tweets, talking about her finances. Some very, very contentious moments that we have been learning about inside of this courthouse. We'll have more on them in just a moment when our special coverage continues.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [15:41:07]

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: We're back with our special coverage of the Trump hush money trial. Right now the defense is cross-examining Stormy Daniels in what's been a very dramatic and revealing day in court.

During our commercial break just now, Trump's attorney accused Daniels, and I'm quoting now, of making money by claiming to have had sex with President Trump for more than a decade.

Daniels responded, and I'm quoting her now -- I've been making money by telling my story about what happened to me.

Necheles, the attorney, then asked: That story has made you a lot of money, right? To which Daniels replied -- and I'm quoting her now -- It's also cost me a lot of money.

I'm back with my expert panel, and let me start, Elliot, once again with you. The defense is really going very hard on her during this cross-examination.

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Right, and I think there's two things they're attacking her on right now. Who's to say what else will come up in the minutes or hours to come?

Number one, her personal finances and credibility in terms of how she's spoken about her finances. One of the things that came up a moment ago was, Did you or did you not tweet that you had enough money from your film career to buy a ranch? And there was a back and forth over whether she did or didn't.

And then she ultimately said, Well, I rent a ranch now.

But it's an inconsistent statement about sort of her financial situation at the time. Also, they're returning repeatedly to this question of personal bias against the defendant. And this has -- it's been a thread throughout the cross-examination. Did you call him names in social media or elsewhere?

And moreover, this final point that they've hit. Her statement that she would, you know, go to jail before paying Trump any money. That speaks to two things.

Number one, she's willing to flout a legal obligation, which is a credibility question. But also, too, bias against the defendant. Now, again, all this is to be said, it's all about how the jury regards it.

And they may have trusted the testimony before. Because she made the core point that she did have sexual relations with that man, Donald Trump. Which is sort of the core legal point that's being made here.

But all of these separate points are hurting her credibility. And we'll see what the jury does.

BLITZER: Does the defense team, Trump's defense team, risk going too far in pressing Stormy Daniels?

WILLIAMS: Absolutely. You can always go too far when.

BLITZER: In the eyes of the jury.

WILLIAMS: In the eyes of the jury. When cross-examining a witness, if you're seen as too aggressive. I don't think it's an accident that the female member of the defense team is the one doing the cross- examination here. To avoid the appearance of a man bullying her on, for instance, something Kristen Holmes was saying in our break a moment ago. About her chuckling.

Like, that would just land differently in front of a jury if a male questioner was the one doing it than a female one. But even setting the gender question aside, cross-examination is a delicate balance where you try to have your Perry Mason banging the shoe on the table moment. And it could backfire in front of the jury and they might sympathize with the witness.

BLITZER: Kristen, you're getting some reaction from inside the Trump world.

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, and I'm hearing from sources that essentially say that after today, they do, you know, will continue to paint this as political. But also that what they saw today with the mistrial, what they saw with essentially their belief or their spin on it. Is that the judge allowed way too many details, obviously, then his team brought this -- said that they should have a mistrial. They're saying that this case now, it's very clear that this is brought just to embarrass Donald Trump. Not because there's actually any legalities here.

And I will say, having just witnessed this and read this all day long, there is an embarrassment factor to the former president for sure.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: There is also, I think, you know, now for Stormy Daniels, the defense is effectively saying she's out for retribution and that she's not truthful. That she had a conversation with Gloria Allred looking for maybe a legal case.

[15:45:00]

Then she says, well, I didn't tell her I had sex with Donald Trump and I wasn't, you know, she wanted me to accuse him of rape and I wasn't going to do that. But it's clear.

And then Necheles makes it look like, as we post here, that Daniels is making this up. But all of these tweets and all of her saying I hate Donald Trump, I'd like him to go to jail, I would dance if he went to jail. They're portraying her as a woman just wanting retribution and willing to do anything to get retribution.

And presumably putting that in the context of this case, that is what is going on with her at the stand. And all she wants to do is destroy Donald Trump. WILLIAMS: But you know, an important point, all absolutely true, 100 percent of this. Now, again, having prosecuted gangs before, you put witnesses on sometimes that literally tried to kill each other. And have so much bias and so much personal hatred that it almost ended in a homicide.

And you know, you have to present that to the jury. And juries can still convict someone even when a witness has tried to kill another one. You have to address their credibility questions and have enough other evidence otherwise.

But this is -- none of this is helpful to Stormy Daniels' cause. It's just the open question remains how the jury is ultimately going to take it.

BORGER: Yes, and she's not going to pay back the money she owes Donald Trump for a lawyer's fees because it wasn't, you know, the verdict wasn't what she liked.

HOLMES: And part of that, you know, when we talk about money, it's not just paying it back. They're also saying that, oh, you just essentially talked about this because you knew it would make money. That you talked about having sex with Donald Trump. That's something that would make you money. And that's what she's answering now.

BORGER: Yes, so they also want to make her look like some kind of extortionist in some way and a liar. And somebody who's out for retribution, which are not positive attributes.

BLITZER: Gloria, Trump posted on Truth Social saying the prosecution had gone too far. His words, gone too far and called for a mistrial. How do you think Trump supporters are going to view today's testimony?

BORGER: I think they're going to agree. I think they're going to say that the judge wasn't in control and that he let them go too far. And that there was a legitimate case for a mistrial.

And that there should have been one because Stormy Daniels' testimony was way too graphic. Now, you know, the judge decided there shouldn't be a mistrial. But I think clearly that would be brought up on appeal.

WILLIAMS: Yes, and even if this doesn't make it into campaign materials, one of the things that the former president can do in his daily press conferences is attack the judge. And he can go out there under the terms of the gag order, which specifically exempted the judge.

He can go out there and say another example of the judge having been biased against me. He can do that.

BLITZER: I want to go back to Brianna in New York outside the courthouse. Brianna, new details emerging, I take it.

KEILAR: Yes, that's right. Some pretty contentious moments there inside of the courthouse behind us. Wolf. I'm back now with Phil and Paula and some themes sort of coming out of these questions. REID: Yes, two big themes I've seen over the past ten minutes. The first is whether Stormy Daniels actually financially benefited from her liaison with Trump or if she's worse off. And then the other one is whether she's being truthful on the stand.

Now, the first is this is a theme that the Trump folks have tried to push. And moments ago, Susan Necheles, she argued that, look, Stormy Daniels has been making money off of having had sex with Trump for over a decade.

But Stormy Daniels argues that no, now she owes Trump hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees. She's at risk of losing her house. And she tells folks in her documentary that it's hard for her to find work. So that has been a theme throughout this trial. Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels, and whether they are benefiting off of what they have said vis-a-vis the defendant.

This other idea is whether she's being honest. And here Susan Necheles appeared to catch her in a lie when she asked if she told Gloria Allred that she had had sex with Trump. Stormy Daniels said that she did tell Gloria Allred that.

And then Susan Necheles brought up Stormy Daniels' book, read from it, and appeared that that wasn't true. So they sort of impeached the witness right there on the stand, really undercut her credibility. And, again, this is contentious.

Stormy Daniels is upset. She's at times cocking her head, firing back at the defense attorneys. This is not going well for Stormy Daniels. But I'd say it's pretty much what we expected.

MATTINGLY: Yes, I think you knew they were going to be aggressive. You knew the former president clearly probably told them at lunch, please be aggressive. But I also think it underscores the fact that this is a witness that has openings or vulnerabilities for attack, and they're certainly going after them.

I think, to Paul's last point, the contradiction between what Stormy Daniels has said -- as Stormy Daniels has said as it relates to her book, which Susan Necheles pulled out and, to Paul's points, appeared to catch her in a mistruth, was the first time I've really heard them try and get her to say, I'm making the whole thing up. Basically framing this as the only reason you're talking about this at all is because you learned from that conversation that you had to talk about sex in order to make money. That was the way to go after this.

[15:50:00]

Even though you told Gloria Allred or did not tell Gloria Allred that you did have sex. And, again, I get a little twisted up. There's a lot of details and facts here.

But I was wondering if the defense team was actually ever going to try and put up, well, this didn't happen, right, as the former president has said repeatedly. They hadn't up to this point. This is the first time they're trying to say that Stormy Daniels made the entire thing up, citing the book itself.

We'll see how it works.

KEILAR: Is it really believable when you have this, the cost of these payments and what we anticipate is redirect, we're going to learn more about how much this has cost her?

REID: Yes, I would expect that they will bring up, you know, what her income is now. She talks about this in her documentary. It was clear she probably did the documentary for money. She got about $125,000. She said for that. But that's not going to pay for the hundreds of thousands of dollars she owes Trump.

They even asked her at one point if she was incentivized for Trump to go to jail, if she thought if he went to jail that she wouldn't have to pay him.

Now, right now, Daniels says that she was asked what I thought about all this stuff, and I thought that it was BS. She paused before softly using the expletive.

Now, right now, Susan Necheles is trying to get Daniels to talk about when she told E! Online that all of this was, again, BS. And they're trying to go through her contradictory statements where in the past she had denied this affair.

Now, she will say that she did that because either in one case she was intimidated, she thought there would be retaliation from Cohen if she did not. And other times she said, well, this is all I thought I could say.

But, again, she's not a consistent narrator through her own story if you really go back through the record.

KEILAR: Could this be some of the most crucial testimony that we're seeing right now?

MATTINGLY: I think Paula is framing what I was struck by in our extraordinary substantive conversations over the course of the last several hours, of I think what you take from this is what's coming. Right. In terms of if you want to sense, we've talked constantly over the course of the four weeks this has been going on about Michael Cohen, what the prosecution is going to be going after and just how intense and inflammatory the cross is going to be.

What you're getting from this is a window, a very small window into what is going to be kind of a nuclear war that's going to take place when that happens. She's not critical to having a smoking gun. She's not critical necessarily.

I don't know that a lot of people doubt the allegations here to some degree. And you don't have to in order to still have reasonable doubt in this case. This is laying the groundwork, another foundational element for the prosecution.

For the defense, this is starting to give a window into what exactly they can do.

REID: And she doesn't make or break the prosecution's case. Michael Cohen will.

KEILAR: Yes, that's right. And she's acknowledging when asked by Necheles that this was the same time as she was trying to sell her story to InTouch for $15,000. We have to remind people that there has been this theme and this was -- we initially saw this with her former lawyer, Keith Davidson, who also represented Karen McDougal in that catch and kill scheme.

There's this idea that he was an extortionist, that he is sort of bringing people along to be extortionists. And this is aligned to what we're hearing here.

REID: That's exactly right. They're trying to establish that she's always been interested in profiting from this alleged sexual encounter with Trump. And then she and Keith Davidson took it to the next level. Post Access Hollywood tape in late 2016, they knew the Trump campaign was vulnerable. They couldn't let a story like this get out. And they saw that as their opportunity. They knew they had, quote, leverage.

This has been an important line that the defense has really tried to emphasize to the jury. Again, it doesn't speak to the underlying crime of falsifying business records, but it does get at how they've elevated that to a felony, which is arguing why this was done.

KEILAR: She's making the point that she decided to do 60 Minutes with Anderson Cooper, which is not, just to be clear, there are certain places where you can sell your story and there are certain places where you do your story. It's a legitimate outlet and you were not paid for it. And that is one of them.

And that is where she chose to go, which was someplace where she felt that her story would be more legitimately received.

MATTINGLY: She makes clear they gave me nothing. They don't give money. Again, there are different parts of the media industry.

I'm trying to count how many times Elliott Williams has said seedy underbelly over the course of the last several weeks of his drinking game. Maybe a little messed up right now. But I think that that is an interesting counter from her. Right. I didn't just go through that pathway. I was actually looking at legitimate news organizations who don't do pay to play.

KEILAR: All right. You guys, thank you so much. Obviously, some very key moments that we are watching here. And certainly more of what it's sort of what portends to be ahead here.

So stay with CNN. We have our special coverage continuing after a short break. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:58:58] BLITZER: Welcome back to our special coverage of former President Trump's Hush Money criminal trial. Today, the woman at the center of this historic case, the adult film star Stormy Daniels, has been on the witness stand for several hours. She recounted in vivid detail her alleged sexual encounter with Trump back in 2006.

So much detail that the Trump defense team called for a mistrial. Judge Merchan rejected the request but did acknowledge that some of the prosecution's questions were unnecessary.

Right now, Daniels is facing searing cross-examination questions from Trump's defense team. At one point, she was asked -- and I'm quoting now -- Am I correct that you hate President Trump? Daniels responded, quote, Yes. Trump's lawyer followed up by asking: And you want him to go to jail?

Daniels responded -- and I'm quoting -- I want him to be held accountable.

It's been a very dramatic day of testimony. I'll be back in two hours, 6 p.m. Eastern, in "THE SITUATION ROOM." CNN's special coverage of this trial continues right now on "THE LEAD" with Jake Tapper.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN Breaking News.