Barely a half-hour on the stand, Stormy Daniels began to unspool intimate details about the sex predator Donald Trump, so much so that the judge balked at some of the testimony. He implied it was "gratuitously vulgar", and the defense sought a mistrial. But not so damned fast. As MSNBC legal specialist Lisa Rubin noted on 'The Last Word' last night Ms. Daniels' description of Trump not wearing a condom bears directly on his demeanor and reckless disregard for women - as he revealed in the Access Hollywood tape ('You can grab 'em by the pussy!').
In this case Trump's specific health questions to Ms. Daniels - recounted before he imposed himself on her- were germane. I.e. How often do porn stars get tested for HIV? How many sexual disease tests do you get as a porn star? How many partners have you had? Have you ever had a positive STD test? etc. showed he was actually more concerned about his planned sexual activity without any protection. He didn't want to catch an STD. In other words, he didn't care two winks about her.
Those who wish to get the full details, which the mainstream media never supplied other than in nibbles, need to watch Ms. Daniels extended interview in the Peacock special, 'Stormy':
Stormy | Official Trailer | Peacock Original (youtube.com)
Ms. Daniels said that back in 2006 Trump had invited her to dinner inside his palatial Lake Tahoe hotel suite. She nailed the details perfectly in her testimony: Trump answering the door wearing silk pajamas, the floor had black and white tiles, the high chandeliers etc. When he was rude, she playfully spanked him with a rolled-up magazine (FORBES). And when she asked about his wife, he told her not to worry, saying that they didn’t even sleep in the same room. This response prompted Trump to shake his head in disgust and mutter “bullshit” to his lawyer. He muttered it loud enough that Judge Merchan had to privately rebuke his lawyer Todd Blanche.
Ms. Daniels then recounted the sex itself in graphic detail. It happened, she said, after she returned from the bathroom and found Trump (whom she later called "the orange Turd") in his boxer shorts and T-shirt. She tried to leave and he blocked her path, though not, she said, in a threatening manner. The sex was brief, she said, and although she never said no, there was a “power imbalance.” In other words, Trump wielded the power dynamic much the same way Harvey Weinstein did to the numerous actresses he took advantage of on the basis of considering them for possible future roles. (In Stormy Daniels' case: "If I get you on the Celebrity Apprentice you will be known for more than just being a porn star.")
All of which is totally relevant to this case contradicting the daft CBS legal specialist Rikki Klieman's contention this morning (CBS Mornings) that it wasn't and was merely "salacious" piffle. Klieman seems not to grasp that Stormy's testimony underscores the motive behind why Trump moved 'mountains' to smother the account of his sexual escapade.
As the WSJ front page account today itself noted:
"The brief sexual encounter is at the heart of the trial in which prosecutors allege Trump falsified business documents to conceal a $130,000 payment to Daniels on the eve of the 2016 election to buy her silence. The payment came during a critical moment when Trump was under scrutiny after an Access Hollywood tape surfaced, in which he described how he groped women."
In other words, Ms. Daniels testimony - "salacious" though it may be - has confirmed for all Trump's malignant bestial nature and that he indeed, would 'grab pussies'. It also revealed why his dubious legal eagle team would be so eager to smother it in innuendo and half-assed blarney. After all, having snuffed the details back in 2016 they couldn't have them finally emerge now before the general election on Nov. 5, 2024. And yet, wonder of wonders, one of Trump's bonehead lawyers (Susan Necheles) was the one who brought up her client as the "orange turd" during her cross examination, e.g.
Lawrence: Why Trump's lawyer called him the 'orange turd' during Stormy testimony (youtube.com)
Talk about shooting your client (and yourself) in the behind.
And all the particulars are reminiscent of the granular gross details former MI6 spy Christopher Steele supplied connecting Trump to the infamous "pee tape". That recorded events in a Moscow Ritz Carlton hotel in 2013 when Trump got two hookers to perform a "golden shower" over him as well as the bed the Obamas had slept on when they were there. E.g.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/10/christopher-steele-donald-trump-russia-dossier-golden-shower
Christopher Steele, as I've written before, was no clown or stooge. Nor was he a peddler of false intel or disinformation as the WSJ trolls (including Holman Jenkins Jr.) seem to believe. According to one Financial Times account Steele was the "UK intelligence expert on Russia". James Nixey, the head of Chatham House's Russia and Eurasia program, informed the AP that sections of the dossier document created by Steele "read exactly as reports from the secret services".
I've already posted over 3 years ago I believe this tape exists as a form of kompromat. It fits exactly what a former KGB spook like Putin would do - to ensure compliance from an American traitor (see David Rothkopf's book 'Traitor') - and also fits Trump's degenerate psychopathic and narcissist character to a tee. Same as what he did with Stormy, questioning her on her sexual health testing background then having sex without a condom, risking a pregnancy and an STD from him. Would the fucker have paid for an abortion? Doubtful, given he appointed the 3 stooges (Gorsuch, Coney Barrett, Kavanagh) to the Supreme Court to ensure the downfall of Roe v. Wade.
Where oh where is this tape? Doh! Putin has control of it and will release it if Trump refuses to comply with an order to attempt to get back into office in 2024 and transform the U.S. into an autocratic satellite state under Russkie control. Also, to aid in Putin's conquest of Ukraine (WSJ today, p. A7, 'Putin Doubles Down on Ukraine'), since Trump already stated he'd let Russia attack NATO nations at will, e.g.
In the current context of election interference, Stormy Daniels' testimony, graphic though it may be, specifically calls attention to why the Trump bunch would go to such inordinate lengths to hide her story - as well as the Access Hollywood tape. Context is everything and, in this case, the graphic testimony as Lisa Rubin noted, explains the extraordinary efforts to kill the Stormy Daniels as well as Karen McDougal stories. Because both, in concert with the paper trail "receipts" presented Tuesday, disclose why felonious election fraud was perpetrated on an unsuspecting voting public.
This is also why Trump's defense team plan to go all out to discredit Stormy when the trial resumes Thursday. They need to try because her testimony was explosive and as one commentator put it "the jury can't unsee it." No they can't and shouldn't given this trial is the only one remaining to convict the traitor turd. But in terms of truth telling, Stormy wins hands down given she's already passed a lie detector test - shown on the 'Stormy' special - and Trump never has. Hell, he won't even take one!
Convicting this orange piece of snot may well be the difference between keeping our democracy and losing it to a traitor, sexual predator (as evidenced in the E. Jean Carroll case), consummate liar, grifter and wannabe dictator.
See also:
by Amanda Marcotte | May 9, 2024 - 6:26am | permalink
"The people call Stormy Daniels."
Even though Donald Trump's former lawyer and longtime fixer Michael Cohen is a more important witness in the former president's ongoing criminal trial in Manhattan, the press is just as interested in Tuesday's testimony from the adult film actress at the center of his election interference case. No doubt much of the fascination is salacious, due to the nature of her job and her allegations of a disturbing sexual encounter with Trump in 2006. But much of it is due to Daniels herself, who has proved to be surprisingly charismatic, if at times chaotic, even as she faces a staggering amount of negative attention.
Mostly, however, Daniels matters for reasons outside of the courtroom and the specifics of this hush-money trial. Daniels' story is yet another reminder of what may prove to be Trump's electoral downfall: His bottomless misogyny....
Whether or not Trump's sexual encounter with Daniels was consensual in the legal sense, she describes it as unwanted.
"I didn’t say anything at all," she told the court repeatedly. Claiming that she "blacked out" during the encounter, afterward, Daniels said, "my hands were shaking so hard" and "I felt ashamed that I didn’t stop it and that I didn’t say 'No.'"
Following Daniels' testimony on Tuesday, I was struck by how much it has in common with what E. Jean Carroll described in her two recent civil trials, where both juries found that Trump had sexually assaulted her in the 90s. Carroll, too, told of a random encounter with Trump she initially thought to be flirty but not sexual. Like Daniels, Carroll describes teasing Trump, who famously has no sense of humor about himself. In both cases, the women describe Trump becoming aggressive after the light mockery. In Carroll's case, the judge described what happened after as what "many people commonly understand the word 'rape.'" Daniels, to be clear, frames her encounter with Trump differently.
Since the release of the "Access Hollywood" video in 2016, in which Trump can be heard bragging about sexual assault, the Beltway media has repeatedly tried to move on from the story of Trump's legion of issues with women. Indeed, when Carroll's accusations first came out in 2019, the press barely paid any mind. But the story of his rampant misogyny has never fully gone away. There was the Women's March that overshadowed his 2017 inauguration. Then the over two dozen women who stepped forward with stories of being subject to the sexual harassment and assault Trump himself described so vividly. Trump, of course, is more responsible than any other person on the planet for the overturn of Roe v. Wade and the stampede of Republican state legislators banning abortion.
And:
by Carl Gibson | May 11, 2024 - 6:11am | permalink
On Friday, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's team entered a years-old tweet from former President Donald Trump into evidence, which appears to both confirm the facts of the indictment and undermine the core of defense lawyers' main argument.
MSNBC legal contributor Adam Klasfeld tweeted Friday that one of Bragg's paralegals read the tweet into the official record despite Trump's team unsuccessfully fighting to exclude it. The tweet itself, which was sent on May 3, 2018, while Trump was in the White House, reads: "Mr. [Michael] Cohen, an attorney, received a monthly retainer, not from the campaign and having nothing to do with the campaign, from which he entered into, through reimbursement, a private contract between two parties, known as a non-disclosure agreement, or NDA."
And:
by Thom Hartmann | May 9, 2024 - 6:44am | permalink
The most powerful elected Republican in America declared war on the rule of law yesterday.
House Speaker Mike Johnson announced that Congress, on behalf of wannabee “day one” dictator Donald Trump, is going to use every power available to him and his colleagues to nullify America’s court system.
“President Trump has done nothing wrong here and he continues to be the target of endless lawfare. It has to stop. And you’re gonna see the United States Congress address this in every possible way that we can, because we need accountability. … All these cases need to be dropped, because they are a threat to our system.”
“All these cases” and potential future cases include Trump:
— Sharing secrets with Russia that burned US and US ally spies.
— Inciting rebellion against the United States on January 6th.
— Running his businesses from the White House while multiple foreign governments poured cash into his properties in violation of the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause.
— Stealing national defense secrets from the White House, transporting them to Florida and New Jersey, and then lying to the FBI about them.
— Raping and then threatening and defaming E. Jean Carroll.
— Criminally obstructing investigations into his campaign’s ties to Russia.
— Conspiring with Republicans in multiple states to defraud the American people with forged Electoral College certificates.
— Threatening Georgia’s Secretary of State with criminal prosecution if he wouldn’t “find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have.”
— Violating campaign finance laws on multiple occasions.
— Committing tax and insurance fraud.
— Extorting a foreign leader to manufacture dirt on his political opponent.
And those are just Trump’s commonly known crimes; we haven’t yet begun to dig into other consequential crimes Trump committed to become president in 2016 and during his four years in office.
From his teenage years violating fair housing laws by marking rental applications for his father’s properties with a “C” for “colored” when Black people applied, to decades of business crimes including a fraudulent “university” and fake charity, to stealing money from thousands of employees and contractors, Trump has been a one-man crime wave his entire life.
And now, given the choice between throwing in with a career criminal or defending America’s criminal justice system, separation of powers, and the rule of law, today’s Republicans have chosen to throw in with the crook. Barry Goldwater and Everett Dirksen are rolling over in their graves.
And:
by Robert Lipsyte | May 8, 2024 - 6:42am | permalink
It was the jokes about former President Donald Trump’s rumored flatulence in the courtroom that pushed me toward despair. And don’t think it was disgust with the subject matter either. After all, I’ve lived with teenagers and I wasn’t all that surprised by yet another Trump-inspired trivialization of a critical civic institution. What appalled me was the possibility that—let’s be clear here—such stories would somehow humanize the monster, that his alleged farting and possible use of adult diapers would win him sympathy. I even wondered whether such rumors could be part of a scheme to win him votes.
So, yes, Trump can make you that crazy.
Or maybe it’s something about important trials, about the slow unspooling of evidence and our hunger for resolution that makes us simultaneously twitchy and increasingly catatonic. I experienced this once before on a national level, just a little less than 30 years ago, when lawyers for another adored psycho tested the American justice system with what could only be called a sleazy brilliance. They put racism on trial. This time around, democracy may be at stake and it’s possible the defense lawyers may win again (as they just did with another monster, Harvey Weinstein).
And:
by Carl Gibson | April 24, 2024 - 6:59am | permalink
If former President Donald Trump is convicted of crimes and sentenced to prison, it's likely his permanent Secret Service detail would follow him to the cell block.
Since 1965, the U.S. Secret Service has been required by statute to protect all former presidents of the United States and their spouses for life, unless they decline protection. This means that Trump could theoretically have his personal security team with him — even if he's an inmate.
According to a Tuesday New York Times report, the logistics of incarcerating a former president are already being discussed now that his first criminal trial is officially underway. The topic of how Trump's Secret Service protection would operate in a prison environment initially emerged after this week's gag order hearing in Judge Juan Merchan's courtroom.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and his team of prosecutors have argued that Trump should be fined $1,000 for each instance of him allegedly violating Merchan's gag order. They also stressed that the gag order — which was meant to prohibit Trump from attacking trial witnesses, court staff and their families — could also be enforced by incarceration of up to 30 days should financial penalties prove ineffective (prosecutors did not call for Trump to be jailed over the current alleged violations).
And:
by Heather Digby Parton | April 27, 2024 - 6:52am | permalink
Donald Trump held a little rally at a construction site in New York before his trial commenced on Thursday morning. He glad-handed the workers and passed out pamphlets that claimed he would end Biden's electric vehicle mandate. They all seemed to like him but, of course, they would, as Fox News reported that the attendees were solicited and vetted by the Trump campaign. In fact one of the "workers" interviewed at the event was a former staffer of disgraced GOP congressman George Santos:
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