Stormy Daniels is "likely" to testify on Tuesday in Trump's hush money trial, his attorney Clark Brewster told the Associated Press.
In response, Trump posted to Truth Social - then deleted - an angry response, saying "I have just recently been told who the witness is today. This is unprecedented, no time for lawyers to prepare. No judge has ever run a trial in such a biased and partisan way."
According to Politico, "Trump lawyer Susan Necheles said prosecutors told Trump’s defense that Stormy Daniels will be the second witness today. The lawyers, outside the presence of the jury, are now re-arguing about whether Daniels will be permitted to testify in detail about her alleged sexual encounter with Trump."
Daniels was paid $130,000 by former Trump attorney and personal fixer, Michael Cohen, in the closing weeks of Trump's 2016 Republican presidential campaign, over what she says was a sexual encounter in July 2006.
Daniels’ testimony, even if sanitized for a courtroom setting and stripped of tell-all details, is by far the most-awaited spectacle in a trial that has toggled back and forth between tabloidesque elements and dry recordkeeping details. Her turn on the witness stand will represent a remarkable moment legally and politically, with courtroom testimony from an adult film performer about an intimidate encounter she says had with Trump adding to the long line of historic firsts in this case. -AP
Cohen paid Daniels after her previous attorney, Keith Davidson, threatened to have her make on-the-record statements to the National Enquirer or on television about the alleged sexual encounter. National Enquirer editor Dylan Howard alerted boss David Pecker - who told Cohen that Daniels was threatening to go public, after she had previously sought to sell her story to another celebrity gossip magazine in 2011, Life & Style, AP continues.
Trump's deleted post came one day after the judge in the case, Juan Merchan, threatened to throw Trump in jail if he continued to violate a gag order in the case.
"Your continued violations of this court's lawful order threaten to interfere with the administration of justice in constant attacks, which constitute a direct attack on the rule of law. I cannot allow that to continue," Merchan said on Monday.
Trump appeared to call his bluff, telling the press outside the courtroom that "Frankly, you know what, our Constitution is much more important than jail. It’s not even close. I’ll do that sacrifice any day."
On Monday, the jury heard from two witnesses; former Trump Organization controller Jeffrey McConney, who explained the process that the company used to reimburse payments that were allegedly meant to suppress embarrassing stories from surfacing, which were then logged as legal expenses in a way that Manhattan prosecutors said broke the law.
That said, McConney also said that Trump did not personally ask him to log them as legal expenses. What's more, Keith Davidson, Stormy's former lawyer, testified that the payments weren't "hush-money," but was instead a "consideration."
Trump has been found in contempt twice for a total of 10 violations of the gag order.
Trump has denied having sex with Daniels, and previously referred to her as "horseface."
