Trump defense attorney Susan Necheles did not listen to her critics. Instead of dialing back the aggressiveness she showed Tuesday, when she first began cross-examining Stormy Daniels, she leaned into it on Thursday, deploying what an NBC legal analyst referred to as the "nutty and slutty" attack.
Daniels earlier in week discussed in at-times mortifying detail an alleged sexual encounter she had with Donald Trump in 2006. Her account was in fact so detailed as to upset the judge, who said some of her testimony went beyond what should have been said in the courtroom.
Necheles could have moved on, content to show that Daniels has no idea whether the former president falsified business records to cover up the $130,000 hush payment received. Instead, as NBC's Lisa Rubin noted, she engaged in a "constant" effort to paint Daniels as promiscuous and unreliable, quizzing her about everything from sexual partners to a side hustle involving tarot cards.
"You claimed to be able to speak with people’s dead relatives, right?" Necheles asked, to which Daniels responded: "I make clear it's all entertainment."
It didn't end there. Nechels also accused Daniels of having an affair, saying she slept with a cameraman on her documentary (the two are now married). Daniels responded by saying she and her ex-husband were separated at the time.
Necheles also pressed Daniels about her decision to talk about her alleged tryst with the Republican candidate. "Even though you had agreed that you would not discuss this supposed story and you had received a lot of money for that agreement, you then decided that you wanted to publicly say that you had sex with Donald Trump," she charged.
Daniels rejected that accusation, saying she only spoke out to correct the record. "Nobody would ever want to publicly say that," she said, per CNN. "I wanted to publicly defend myself."
Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor, warned that the aggressive approach was likely to backfire.
"Trump is his lawyers' worst enemy," he wrote on social media. It would have been smarter, legally, he argued, to concede that a sexual encounter transpired rather than dispute it and have a public fight about the details in front of a jury. "Instead, they're heeding his wish, going after her hard on cross-examination. Jurors won't like it."
Conservative attorney George Conway, an outspoken Trump critic, was more blunt. "[T]his cross is a disaster for the defense," he wrote, taking particular issue with the defense choosing to question Daniels about her alleged hotel room meeting with Trump and why she stayed if he didn't serve her dinner.
"Now we are getting into the geography of South Lake Tahoe, as Necheles contests how far Stormy's claim of how far she walked in 2006 after she left [the hotel]," Conway noted. "This ain't helping the defense. It's stupid."
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