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Donald Trump returned to court on Friday after porn star Stormy Daniels’ lurid testimony about her alleged sexual encounter with him, as prosecutors prepared to call their final witnesses in the first-ever criminal trial of a sitting or former U.S. president.
In seven hours of testimony this week over two days in New York state criminal court in Manhattan, Daniels spared few details.
She told jurors she had sex with Trump in a Lake Tahoe hotel suite in 2006 while he was married to his wife Melania, testifying about gold tweezers she saw in his toiletry bag and stating that he did not wear a condom.
Trump, 77, has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up his former lawyer Michael Cohen’s $130,000 payment to Daniels, 45, for her silence ahead of the 2016 U.S. presidential election about the alleged encounter.
He denies having sex with Daniels and has called the case a politically motivated effort to interfere with his campaign to win back the White House in the Nov. 5 U.S. election against his Democratic opponent, President Joe Biden.
Before entering the courtroom on Friday, Trump told reporters he planned to campaign over the weekend in nearby New Jersey and once again criticized a gag order Justice Juan Merchan imposed to restrict his public comments about witnesses and jurors in the case. Trump wore a blue suit and red tie.
Friday’s proceedings began with more cross-examination of Madeleine Westerhout, the former White House aide who testified on Thursday about checks Trump signed in the Oval Office and a meeting he scheduled with Cohen early in his 2017-2021 presidency.
Cohen, Trump’s onetime loyal fixer who is now an outspoken antagonist, is chief among the remaining witnesses. Cohen said on a podcast on Thursday that he expected to testify next week.
Prosecutors with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office have not said when Cohen will be called to the stand, and his testimony could last several days.
Prosecutors say Trump falsely labeled his reimbursement payments to Cohen in 2017 as legal retainer fees in his New York-based real estate company’s books to obscure the payment to Daniels, which they say violated campaign finance law.
They say the payments to Daniels and another woman who says she had an affair with Trump, Playboy model Karen McDougal, were part of a broader scheme to corrupt the 2016 election by buying the silence of people with potentially damaging information in violation of campaign finance laws.
Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton in the race for president that year. Trump denies having had an affair with McDougal.
Prosecutors have called 16 witnesses, and said they could rest their case by May 21. Last month, defense lawyer Susan Necheles said prosecutors had provided them a list of 20 potential witnesses. They may not call all those witnesses, and prosecutor Joshua Steinglass said in court on Thursday they do not plan to call McDougal.
Todd Blanche, a defense lawyer for Trump, on both Tuesday and Thursday asked Merchan to declare a mistrial, arguing Daniels’ detailed testimony had prejudiced the jury and was not relevant to the charges.
Merchan denied both requests, pointing out that Blanche in his April 22 opening statement said Daniels’ story was false and prosecutors had a right to have Daniels offer details that support her account.