US Correspondent Logan Church writes from New York where a court case featuring former president Donald Trump became tense as graphic details were revealed.
You’d be forgiven for thinking this was the plot of a bad TV court drama. But no. Welcome to America.
Today, for the first time in years, Stormy Daniels faced former president Donald Trump in the courtroom in a blockbuster fraud case.
She is one of the star witnesses in a criminal election fraud case against Trump – he’s fighting 34 felony charges. If found guilty, he could face prison time. This is also the first criminal case brought against a former US President.
Daniels’ part of it involves alleged hush money payments she received after she was supposedly threatened to keep quiet about sexual encounters she said she had with Donald Trump.
Tension has ramped up at a New York court case featuring former president Donald Trump as graphic details were revealed. (Source: 1News)
The hush money payments were allegedly received just before the 2016 Presidential election.
The atmosphere at court today in New York was, to put it mildly, tense.
Judge Juan M Merchan, who is overseeing this trial, gave instructions for Daniels to limit the description of some of the more explicit detail.
The prosecutors fear, of course, that this would distract the jury from the nuts and bolts of the case.
That direction, however, was promptly ignored.
Instead, we heard graphic, un-broadcastable detail about supposed sexual encounters between Daniels and Trump in 2006.
We heard Daniels describe how she came out of a bathroom to find Trump “posing” on a bed in his underwear.
We heard how she was asked to spank him with a magazine, which she said she did, after which she claims he was “much more polite” and suggested she might come on to his hit TV show the Apprentice.
There was also discussion about condom use and STDs.
All of this spelled out by Daniels in the courtroom only metres away from Trump, who was doing his best to not react. There were also reports he appeared like he was asleep through some of it.
Meanwhile some of the jury appeared to be trying to hide their own giggles.
Trump has always denied having sex with Daniels, his lawyers alleging today during very tense cross-examination that her main motivation was money.
It is absolutely true that in the years since the hush money allegations emerged Daniels has built her own lucrative media career, including a book deal and numerous TV appearances.
What’s also true is that this is all doing Trump no favours with his re-election efforts.
It’s a race that on current polling is neck and neck – Joe Biden of course has his own problems, including trying to prove there is an appetite amongst Americans to have a president who is in their mid-80s.
But that problem seems to pale in comparison to what we saw today for Trump.
He can’t even do what he does best – go on the attack. The judge has imposed a gag order on the former president, preventing him from publicly attacking witnesses in this case.
That hasn’t stopped Trump from violating that order nine times – he's been warned that a tenth would result in him landing in Rikers, New York’s notorious island prison just off the top of Manhattan.
We throw around the word “unprecedented” a lot in the journalism profession, but there is really not anything else that can describe what we saw today.
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