Why did Stormy Daniels testify in court yesterday about her alleged sexual encounter with Donald Trump?
Anybody who has followed the Donald Trump story in recent years will have already heard most of Stormy’s accounts of her interactions with him. Daniels has a sense of humor. Like many others, she enjoys mocking Trump in public. And in our licentious yet strangely puritanical social-media-mad times, details such as the porn star spanking the 45th president with a rolled-up copy of Forbes magazine are just too much to resist.
The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? Nobody seems to care much. Veracity and justice are not what this trial is about. The case — bodged together as it is by the flagrantly partisan prosecutor Alvin Bragg — is meant to be about the falsification of business records for the purpose of concealing a crime. Quite what that crime is we cannot be too certain — the prosecution seem to be keeping that key aspect under wraps.
The case does not center on whether or not Donald Trump had sex with Stormy Daniels. But the judge allowed it all to be said because, well, when there is so much fun to be had at Trump’s expense, when you can reveal a part of his past that, as a man seeking to return to the White House, he would rather not dwell on — why not?
Trump denies the allegations. Stormy insists it’s all true. Believe who you want. But we should try to honest about what this trial is about.
This is a political hitjob dressed up as justice. It brings up things that hurt Trump with women voters — his former playboy life, his adulterous behavior, the unsuitability of his character for high office. But it is legally a nonsense.
It’s not a genuine investigation into whether or not Trump committed fraud in his attempts to cover up a story that might have harmed his chances of becoming president. It’s an attempt to embarrass Trump and possibly give Joe Biden the chance to call him a convicted felon in time for the election on November 5.
The only concession that the judge, Juan Merchan, made to Trump’s legal team in relation to Daniels’s puerile testimony was that he would not allow any question about Donald Trump’s genitals. That was big of him. Really, though, any tacit attempt to suggest that this is a legitimate criminal trial only serves to prove that it is not.
This article was originally published on The Spectator’s UK website.
