The Washington Examiner’s Sarah Bedford said porn star Stormy Daniels‘s testimony from earlier this week might have hurt prosecutors going after former President Donald Trump more than himself.
Daniels’s testimony came from Trump’s criminal trial in New York, where the presumptive Republican presidential nominee is facing 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to allegedly pay hush money to multiple women. Bedford pointed out that since Daniels took the stand to share the salacious details of her alleged affair with Trump, prosecutors have canceled the testimony of Playboy model Karen McDougal.
“She will no longer appear because I think the prosecution, maybe, recognized that Stormy Daniels went after Trump so hard she perhaps made a sympathetic figure,” Bedford said on Fox Business’s Cavuto: Coast to Coast. “So it’s an extremely weak case, and I think even a conviction would be hard … for that to dent Trump’s support that much.”
Prosecutors were reprimanded by Judge Juan Merchan for exceeding the scope of the trial, which surrounds the falsification of business records. According to Merchan, further details of the alleged affairs were “unnecessary” to prosecute the case.
Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, said she received $130,000 from Trump’s attorney, Michael Cohen, in 2016 not to disclose the affair. Allegedly, Cohen was subsequently reimbursed, which is the heart of the matter.
“I think the political damage here is really minimal because the fact that Trump was a philanderer with women is baked in at this point in his public perception,” Bedford said.
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While Trump has 88 felony charges against him filed by prosecutors across the nation, Trump’s hush money case is the only criminal trial that has the potential to reach a verdict before the 2024 elections.
Trump denies ever having sex with Daniels.
