New York Judge Juan Merchan is allowing testimony at an upcoming criminal trial from Stormy Daniels, a woman who allegedly had an affair with former President Donald Trump — who will be the defendant.
The case, brought by local prosecutors in Manhattan, accuses the ex-president of the falsification of business records connected to hush money given to Daniels before the 2016 elections. Merchan did block testimony on a previous lie detector test taken by Daniels, but he rebuffed the Trump team’s characterizations of Daniels and ex-Trump fixer Michael Cohen as liars, allowing the latter to provide testimony as well. Also allowed to provide testimony is Karen McDougal, another woman who allegedly had an affair with Trump and was the target of a financial arrangement effectively silencing her for a time via purchasing the rights to her story.
And Merchan is also allowing some testimony on the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape on which Trump can be heard seemingly bragging about the prospect of committing sexual misconduct. Trump and his team have consistently dismissed the language on the recording as merely braggadocio, but the idea with referencing it is that the situation spurred some of the concerns leading to the money provided to Daniels.
Trump is currently struggling to a severe extent in court elsewhere in New York, with recent court filings revealing that dozens of companies have rebuffed his desperate push for a bond covering hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties from a state fraud case. Trump claims that the requirement for the bond to stave off collections while his appeals move forward is something unheard of previously, but that’s not true. It’s in line with established practice. Trump and his team are now asking that requirements he post any bond at all be lifted, pointing to the ex-president’s real estate holdings as supposedly sufficiently protecting future possibilities of him paying up.
