'It backfires': Law professor shows how Trump's latest move 'undermines' his criminal case
Donald Trump's defense reportedly wants to grill Stormy Daniels for claiming her sleeping with former President Donald Trump wasn't entirely consensual. But doing so may be perilous.
"I think it backfires, especially if they're going after Stormy Daniels in order to protect Trump's reputation," said NYU law professor Ryan Goodman on CNN.
The network reported that the strategy Trump's defense appears to be taking is to "address some of this reputational damage to Trump" that they may believe occurred from Daniels' testimony.
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Goodman then laid out the ways that enacting that route legally could hinder the 45th president's defense.
"The first is that it could just mean that she testifies more and more about the details as to why she now we're saying that she felt uncomfortable in the situation and some of the testimony that she gave is towards the end of the spectrum of nonconsensual sexual encounter."
"And the more they elicit that that could actually be worse for him — for the jurors."
On Tuesday, jurors stood courtside to absorb nearly four hours of porn star Stormy Daniels diving into specific details of a 2006 sexual encounter at a Lake Tahoe golf event with the former president.
Trump has denied the affair and pleaded not guilty to a 34-count indictment accusing him fudging the transaction of buying Daniels' silence in order to manipulate the 2016 election results where he won the White House.
Goodman also stressed that if Trump's attorneys go for the jugular and try to hit Daniels over her sordid details of what she says transpired between her and Trump, it may compromise their ability to win a mistrial.
That's because much of the pillow talk rattled off by the adult film actress is by all accounts superfluous to the crime which in this case is based on falsifying business documents related to the payments to coverup the affair for a political advantage.
"The other way in which it could backfire is right now, they might actually have a basis to appeal," Goodman said. "They try to even say that there should be a mistrial because of the prejudicial information that came in from Stormy Daniels because it was so salacious, et cetera — now they will actually be eliciting it potentially so that also might undermine their ability to use that as a basis to appeal."
Daniels is expected to retake the witness stand on Thursday and be questioned by Trump's defense attorneys.