Elie Honig: Stormy Daniels’ Cross-Examination Was a ‘Disaster’

HONIG: “So it‘s interesting, because I was doing our live coverage, following along with our minute-by-minute updates from inside the courtroom, and I had the exact opposite impression. Now, you had the benefit of being in the courtroom, so I will defer to that, but we do also have to be careful when we play sort of amateur psychologists to the jurors’ movements, right? They were leaning forward, they were taking taking notes. Okay. They could be taking notes because they think this is a great point, or they could be taking notes because they think ‘This makes no sense and I don‘t believe it.’ So let‘s just all be cautious in reading into the jurors physicality. My impression was she was plausible on her explanation of what happened in that hotel room. It‘s hard for me to believe that a juror heard that and thought this is entirely made up. There may well be some embellishments, which Arthur I think pointed out effectively in the last hour, but I think it‘s quite clear they had sex in 2006 in that hotel room. But the cross-exam, boy, her responses were disastrous. I mean, do you hate Donald Trump? Yes, of course she does. That‘s a big deal. When the witness hates the person who‘s liberty is at stake, that‘s a big damn deal. And she‘s putting out tweets, fantasizing about him being in jail. That really undermines the credibility. The fact that she owes him $500,000, she, by order of a court, owes Donald Trump a half million dollars and said, ‘I will never pay him, I will defy a court order,’ the defense is going to say, ‘She‘s willing to defy a court order. She‘s not willing to respect an order of a judge. Why is she going to respect this oath she took?’ So I thought it went quite poorly on cross-exam. At the end of direct, I thought, ‘Okay, they got what they needed,’ but I think the cross is make real inroads.’”
TOOBIN: “Can I ask you both about part of the cross that that has been a theme of the defense, which was, this whole thing is just extortion? These are people who had a way of extracting money from Donald Trump, and that‘s what they did with the threat of disclosing stuff he didn‘t want disclosed. How do you think that plays into this case?”
HONIG: “You go first. You were there.”
EISEN: “Look, I thought that the importance of starting with Pecker, who makes clear that there is an agreement, and he was very persuasive, and the rest of the case, including — put the documents half of the case two, the cover-up to the side, Stormy didn‘t have anything to say about that. The rest of the case is all a follow-on to Pecker, establishing the contours of this campaign finance election interference conspiracy.”