NEW YORK — The judge in Donald Trump's hush money case denied a second request from defense attorneys to declare a mistrial over porn actor Stormy Daniels' testimony, which concluded Thursday.
Daniels' testimony is a build-up to the prosecution's star witness Michael Cohen, who arranged the $130,000 payment to Daniels and later went to prison for orchestrating the payments and other charges. “This judge, what he did, and what his ruling was, is a disgrace,” Trump said. “Everybody saw what happened today.”The judge in Donald Trump's hush money case on Thursday denied another request from defense lawyers for a mistrial over Stormy Daniels' testimony.
“I agree. That should never have come out. That question should never have been asked and that answer should never have been given,” Merchan said. “For the life of me, I don’t know why Ms. Necheles didn’t object.”Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass countered a claim by Donald Trump's defense attorneys that Stormy Daniels changed her story as “extraordinarily untrue,” though there may be details “said in one forum and not another.
“They’re basically trying to have their cake and eat it too,” he said in pushing back against the defense's request for a mistrial.Defense attorneys in Donald Trump's hush money trial on Thursday said Stormy Daniels' testimony went far afield of rules established to protect Trump from being prejudiced by tawdry details, and didn’t match the account that was offered up to Cohen when he decided to pay her $130,000 for the rights to her story.
Under defense questioning earlier, Daniels insisted that while some reports on what she said had been incomplete, she hadn’t changed her story or fabricated it. Judge Juan M. Merchan on Thursday rejected the defense’s request to modify the existing gag order to allow Donald Trump to publicly respond to Stormy Daniels’ testimony.
Prosecutor Christopher Conroy responded that the gag order shouldn’t be altered to allow comments about Stormy Daniels because those remarks could have a chilling effect on other witnesses. He added that he's spoken with one future witness who is worried about the consequences of taking the stand.