A porn star’s lurid tale of sex with Donald Trump, the prosecution’s star witness calmly admitting he lied and stole and Trump’s ex-public relations head sobbing on the stand.
These are probably the most dramatic moments to unfold at the former president’s New York City hush money trial.
The presumptive GOP nominee, 77, has sat glumly at the defense table for the past seven weeks in a drab Manhattan courtroom as his former fixer Michael Cohen, X-rated film actress Stormy Daniels and other witnesses described his alleged plot to bury a sex scandal before the 2016 presidential election.
The jurors convicted Trump on Thursday of all 34 counts related to falsifying business records for covering up the $130,000 payout that bought Daniels’ silence.
Trump maintains he did nothing wrong and that the system is rigged against him.
Here’s a look at five of the most memorable scenes from the historic, surreal trial in Manhattan Supreme Court.
Trump mouths ‘bulls–t’ as Stormy Daniels swears under oath that she spanked him
Trump couldn’t contain his anger as Daniels took the stand and divulged racy details about her alleged romp with him at a July 2006 celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe, California.
When the porn star testified that — moments before having sex with him inside his hotel room — she followed through on a dare and “swatted” the former president “right on the butt” with a rolled-up magazine displaying his own face, Trump appeared to mouth the word “bulls—t.”
The irate presidential candidate then received a talking-to about his behavior from his lawyers, after Justice Juan Merchan called them to the bench to warn that Trump could be held in contempt of court if he continued cursing in view of the jury.
“I understand that your client is upset at this point, but he is cursing audibly, and he is shaking his head visually and that’s contemptuous,” the judge said. “It has the potential to intimidate the witness and the jury can see that.”
“You need to speak to him. I won’t tolerate that,” Merchan added during the sidebar.
Trump denies that he ever had an affair with Daniels.
Defiant Daniels says if sex with Trump was a porno, she would have ‘written it better’
A defiant Daniels had quite the response when Trump lawyer Susan Necheles tried to attack her credibility by claiming that her porn career writing and starring in “phony stories about sex” should make jurors doubt her testimony about having sex with Trump.
“Wow,” Daniels responded, and then paused. “That’s not how I would put it. The sex in the films is very much real, just like what happened to me in that room [with Trump].”
“If that story was untrue, I would have written it to be a lot better,” Daniels added — in a dig at Trump about the tryst, which she testified was emotionless and didn’t last long.
The 12 Manhattanites on the jury tried to keep a poker face during Daniels’ often racy and entertaining testimony, but a couple of them cracked smiles during the fiery exchange.
Cohen calmly admits to stealing $60,000 from ex-boss Trump, who shakes his head
Trump’s fixer-turned-foe Cohen coolly confessed to stealing $60,000 from his ex-boss — claiming the theft was a form of “self-help” — as Trump’s lawyers attacked his credibility with heated questions.
Cohen, a convicted perjurer who says he lied under oath to protect Trump, made the admission while being questioned by defense attorney Todd Blanche about a bizarre scheme to rig a popularity poll of “most famous businessmen” in Trump’s favor.
“So you stole from the Trump Organization, right?” Blanche asked .
“Yes, sir,” Cohen, matter-of-factly replied from the witness stand, some 15 feet away from Trump. Cohen later claimed that he stole as a form of “self-help” in response to Trump slashing his bonus by $100,000.
Trump had spent most of the morning sitting at the defense table with his eyes closed, but he perked up and glared at Cohen as he made the admission.
The judge spars with witness: ‘Are you staring me down right now?’
Robert Costello, a former federal prosecutor with ties to Trump’s legal team, irked Judge Merchan by rolling his eyes and muttering “jeez” during his May 19 testimony — leading the judge to take the rare step of clearing the courtroom to chew him out.
Costello, the defense’s main witness, become red-faced and annoyed after Merchan sustained several of prosecutors’ objections during questioning by Trump attorney Emil Bove.
Costello — who said he advised Cohen in 2018, though it came out that he’d blasted Cohen in a private email at the time as an “a–hole” — shook his head after one such ruling, and muttered “jeez.”
Costello’s quip caused the judge to briefly excuse the jury and remind Costello to follow “proper decorum” in the courtroom.
Tensions then hit a boiling point after Merchan broke away from his typically composed and measured tone to erupt at Costello, accusing him of trying to intimidate him by staring him down.
“Are you staring me down right now?” the judge charged. “Clear the courtroom, please. Clear the courtroom.”
Members of the public and press were chaotically ushered out of the courtroom, and the judge — behind closed doors — gave Costello one final warning.
“If you try to stare me down one more time, I will remove you from the stand,” the judge said. “I will strike his entire testimony; do you understand me?”
Costello was a combative witness in general who seemed to speak easily when answering questions from Trump’s team, while giving Manhattan prosecutor Susan Hoffinger a hard time during her cross-examinations, often finding ways to not entirely answer her questions.
Trump’s former top communications aide Hope Hicks sobs on witness stand
Hope Hicks, Trump’s former top White House communications official, cried on the witness stand shortly after testifying that Trump was glad that Daniels’ sex story was revealed by the Wall Street Journal in 2018 — rather than before the 2016 election.
“I think Mr. Trump’s opinion was it was better to be dealing with it now, and that it would have been bad to have that story come out before the election,” Hicks told prosecutors.
She started crying minutes later after being questioned by Trump’s lawyer about her recollection of her time working for the Trump Organization.
The former Trump aide provided testimony that could prove useful for both the prosecution and defense.
She helped the DA’s office connect some dots about why Daniels’ story could have damaged Trump’s campaign — which was reeling at the time from the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape, on which Trump bragged about grabbing women by their genitals.
But she also painted Trump as a family man who worried about negative stories affecting his wife Melania and his children.
Trump was so worried about Melania seeing a story about the National Enquirer paying $150,000 to former Playboy model Karen McDougal to bury her claim about an affair she had with Trump that he ordered newspapers to not be delivered to his home when the story was published, Hicks recalled.
“President Trump really values Mrs. Trump’s opinion, and she doesn’t weigh in all the time, but when she does, it’s really meaningful to him,” Hicks said.
“And, you know, he really, really respects what she has to say. So I think he was just concerned about what her perception of this would be. And, yeah, I know that was weighing on him.”
The prosecution’s case hinges on jurors believing that Trump covered up the Daniels hush money payment to help his campaign, rather than to save his family from embarrassment.
