Trump attorney's dogged pursuit of Stormy Daniels is blowing up in her face: experts
Donald Trump's attorney Susan Necheles was dogged in her pursuit of Stormy Daniels on the witness stand Thursday — and experts warned her approach could backfire.
In day 14 of Trump's trial over charges that he falsified business records involving a hush money deal with Daniels in 2016, Necheles hammered Daniels on everything from discrepancies about whether they ate dinner during a tryst to what was, and wasn't, the adult movie star's signature.
Legal analysts on MSNBC argued that there's a line between a persistent cross examination and something that could make the jury more sympathetic to Daniels — and Necheles was close to crossing it.
At one point, Necheles said that Daniels had "a lot of experience making phony stories about sex."
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Necheles added that Daniels memorizes fictional stories and repeats them — suggesting she's made up a a story about Trump.
Daniels replied, "If that story was untrue, I would have written it to be a lot better. I didn't have to write this one. I didn't make millions of dollars, and I didn't write this story."
MSNBC host Ana Cabrera asked legal analysts how much further Trump's lawyers needed to go to attack her credibility.
"It feels like we're revisiting a lot of the same territory throughout this cross-examination, and could this in any way backfire on Necheles?"
The analysts agreed.
"I think it could for sure backfire, and I think there are a couple of ways," suggested legal analyst Temidayo Aganga-Williams, who previously served as senior counsel on the Jan. 6 Committee.
"First, the prosecution is going to have a chance to redirect, so they're going to get to ask her, Stormy Daniels, additional questions, and if Susan Necheles opens a door to certain new items, the prosecution might tell the judge, you know, they're suggesting she didn't have sex with the former president. We want to ask her more questions about the sex that night," he continued.
It would then bring that story back to the jury and Trump's denial about the affair.
"The second point," Aganga-Williams noted, "is that their additional evidence is going to be corroboration."
Among the things that the Trump lawyers are attacking her on is that she's an adult film star.
"At the end of the day, other people, I suspect, are going to substantiate that she at least knew Donald Trump and was with him in Nevada around that time," he explained. "I think the third point is the same thing you have with any problematic witness you do as a prosecutor, which is, I didn't choose this person. The defendant chose this person."
Legal analyst George Conway called the dogged pursuit of Daniels a "disaster" for the defense team.
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Trump's attorney going after Stormy Daniels so hard is blowing up in her face: experts youtu.be