Stormy Daniels on Tuesday told jurors her account of a sexual encounter with Donald J. Trump in 2006, an episode that ultimately resulted in the former president’s criminal trial.
Despite the objections of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, Justice Juan M. Merchan ruled that it would be up to jurors to decide on the credibility of the porn actress, whose $130,000 hush-money agreement with Mr. Trump before the 2016 election is at the heart of the charges against him. Prosecutors said she would not, however, describe his genitalia, as she did in her book “Full Disclosure.”
Mr. Trump denies they ever had sex.
The fateful meeting of Mr. Trump and Ms. Daniels nearly 18 years ago took place at a celebrity golf tournament on the banks of Lake Tahoe in Nevada. Mr. Trump was competing there, and Ms. Daniels was working at the event to promote a porn studio, Wicked Pictures.
This account is drawn from versions of her story that Ms. Daniels has told in the past. She first described her interactions with Mr. Trump in a 2011 magazine interview. The magazine, Life & Style, agreed to pay her $15,000 for her story, but she never collected because Mr. Trump’s then fixer, Michael D. Cohen — who is now expected to be one of the prosecution’s primary witnesses — had the story killed before publication.
The interview was eventually published in a related publication, In Touch Weekly, in early 2018 after The Wall Street Journal revealed her hush-money deal. She described the episode again in her book, which was published later that year.
Ms. Daniels has said that at the tournament she rode with Mr. Trump in a golf court while he was playing, and he later asked for her phone number and invited her to dinner.
Ms. Daniels and Mr. Trump were photographed at the tournament together. She was 27 then. He was 60. He had married his third wife Melania the year before, and their son Barron was a few months old.
That night, she has said, she arrived at Trump’s hotel penthouse suite in a gold dress and gold heels and found his bodyguard, Keith Schiller, standing outside. She went in and found him watching television on the couch in pajamas and slippers.
“Does Mr. Hefner know that you stole his outfit?” Ms. Daniels has said she joked, referring to Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner.
Ms. Daniels has said they ate dinner in his room and talked, and he asked her about the porn business. He asked her to sign one of her movie DVDs, and said she reminded him of his daughter.
Then, she says, he told her she should be on “The Apprentice,” his reality show. Ms. Daniels says she scoffed at the idea that a porn star could be on the show, but he insisted he could make it happen. Mr. Trump’s lawyers have said that they intend to argue that Mr. Trump’s interactions with Ms. Daniels concerned only her possible appearance on the show.
After she went to the bathroom, Ms. Daniels has said, she emerged and found him on the bed, and they had sex.
Mr. Trump finished 62nd at the tournament. He and Ms. Daniels met on several occasions after that, and he continued to promise he would get her on to his show, but they never had sex again, she has said. And he never put her on “The Apprentice.”
