Stormy Daniels wore a bulletproof vest to Trump trial
Stormy Daniels’ lawyer has revealed that the porn star wore a bullet-proof vest to Donald Trump’s hush money trial because she feared what “some nut might do to her”.
Clark Brewster, Ms Daniels’ attorney, told CNN that testifying in the historic trial had taken its toll on her, revealing that she cried herself to sleep the night before taking the stand.
“She wore a bulletproof vest every day until she got to the courthouse,” he said.
“She was paralyzed with fear – not of taking the stand or telling her story, but what might some nut might do to her. And I’m genuinely concerned about it as well.”
He added: “She has a lot of fear...she was concerned about the security coming into New York.”
Ms Daniels testified for more than eight hours over two days last week, revealing details about her alleged 2006 affair with Mr Trump. The former president has denied the affair took place.
Mr Trump has been on trial since 15 April after he was charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records related to hush money payments made to Ms Daniels ahead of the 2016 election, in order to stop her coming forward with allegations of a 2006 affair.
Ms Daniels faced gruelling cross-examination from Mr Trump’s defense team about her story but she stood her ground and defended her career.
“This was your career for over 20 years, writing, acting, and directing sex films,” Mr Trump’s attorney Susan Necheles asked.
“You have a lot of experience making phoney stories about sex appear real, right?”
“Wow,” Ms Daniels said, pausing to laugh. “That’s not how I would put it. … The sex in those films is very much real just like in that hotel room.”
Last week was not the first time the porn star expressed her fear for her life due to the hush money scandal.
In 2018, Ms Daniels said she felt threatened by a strange man who approached her and her infant daughter in a Las Vegas parking lot. The incident had happened in 2011, seven years before the scandal was revealed.
“I was in a parking lot, going to a fitness class with my infant daughter...And a guy walked up on me and said to me, ‘Leave Trump alone. Forget the story,’” she told CNN’s Anderson Cooper in 2018.
“And then he leaned around and looked at my daughter and said, ‘That’s a beautiful little girl. It’d be a shame if something happened to her mom,’” she continued. “And then he was gone.”
In a documentary, titled Stormy, she said that the fear continued after the scandal broke in 2018.
“I was completely sure that I was going to die,” Ms Daniels said in the documentary, released in March.
The adult film actress also revealed why she accepted the hush money. “That there would be a paper trail and money trail linking me to Donald Trump so that he could not have me killed,” she said.
Mr Trump’s trial continues this week with testimony from Michael Cohen, his estranged “fixer.” Cohen is the attorney who allegedly made the $130,000 payment to Ms Daniels.
Cohen testified on Monday that when the story broke shortly before the 2016 election, Mr Trump cared more about the impact on his presidential campaign than on his wife, Melania Trump.