The Stormy Daniels testimony so lurid it almost derailed Trump's trial: How ... trends now
The atmosphere inside courtroom 1530 was already electric. A brooding Donald Trump glared out at the ranks of press as if to gauge the size of his audience before prosecutors and defense lawyers haggled over how much of the mechanics of his alleged affair could be brought up before the jury.
Only no-one had reckoned with the way porn star Stormy Daniels would become a runaway witness as she described their 2006 hotel encounter.
'I had my clothes and my shoes off. I believe my bra however was still on. We were in the missionary position,' Daniels said.
Trump, 77, was already motioning to his defense. 'Objection,' said Susan Necheles, raising her umpteenth objection of the morning.
By then, Daniels, 45, had taken us through her career as an erotic dancer, her first pornographic film ('I'll spare you the details,' she said) and her regimen of STD testing (once a month at the time she said she met Trump; twice a month now).
At one point Stormy Daniels flashed a little calf and leant back, hand behind her head, as she demonstrated how she said Donald Trump reclined on a hotel bed in 2006
Trump did not look directly at Daniels, with whom he denies an affair, instead watching her testimony on the video screen in front of him, a frown on his face
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The jury had heard her talk about 'condom mandatory' porn shoots, a description of herself with 'blond hair and big boobs,' and how she spanked Trump with a rolled-up magazine.
But it was two moments, when she described not being able to remember how she ended up on a hotel bed with Trump and how he allegedly failed to wear a condemn, that briefly threatened to derail the whole hush money case.
Either way, Daniels was determined to tell her story of how she met Trump at a celebrity golf event in 2006, before having sex with him and then selling the rights to her story just ahead of the 2016 election.
And tell it she did ... using all her skills as an actress to deliver it with hand waves, lip pouts and nose wrinkles, interspersed with laughter as if to underline the absurdity of it all.
The jury listened to the deluge of words entranced. After a day of dull but essential testimony about invoices and checks on Monday, Daniels was the showstopper.
Some of the jurors kept their eyes fixed downwards as they took notes. Others looked hypnotized.
Her arrival in the courtroom on Tuesday morning was followed by all eyes. Even Trump looked reluctantly across as she arrived wrapped in a long black hooded top, that stretched down below her skirt, spectacles perched above her blond, black-streaked hair, like the Goth librarian of a teenage boy's dreams.
It was one of the few moments when Trump could see her. His view of her was obscured by the judge's dais, forcing him to watch her testimony on his desktop monitor.
Daniels avoided looking at him too. She had to lean forward, twisting in her seat to point him out when asked by prosecutor Susan Hoffinger.
The jury was shown the well-known picture of Trump and Daniels, taken at a celebrity golf event in Lake Tahoe. She described their brief meeting and how he invited her for dinner after
Stormy Daniels with Donald Trump in 2006, at the time of the alleged affair
The witness box could barely contain her as she acted out her meeting with Trump at a
