Stormy Daniels testifies that Trump told her he and Melania ‘don’t sleep in the same room’
‘Don’t worry about that,’ Ms Daniels testified Mr Trump said of his wife – just one year into their marriage and four months after Barron was born
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Your support makes all the difference.Donald Trump told Stormy Daniels back in 2006 that he didn’t “sleep in the same room” as his newlywed wife Melania, according to the adult film star’s courtroom testimony.
In a Manhattan criminal courtroom on Tuesday, Ms Daniels took the witness stand in the former president’s hush money trial and laid out the lead-up to her sexual encounter with Mr Trump in a hotel room in July 2006.
The former president has repeatedly denied that the affair ever happened.
After meeting at a celebrity golf tournament in July 2006, Ms Daniels testified that Mr Trump asked if she would have dinner with him.
“No, with an expletive in front of it,” she remembered thinking at the time.
She ultimately agreed and went to his penthouse suite, she testified. According to Ms Daniels, Mr Trump, then 60, first talked with the then-27-year-old for nearly two hours that evening.
At one point in the conversation, Ms Daniels told the court that Mr Trump showed her a photo of his wife Melania and told her not to worry about her.
“Don’t worry about that,” he said, according to Ms Daniels. “We don’t even sleep in the same room.”
Ms Daniels said that she and Mr Trump never ended up having dinner, testifying that she came out of the bathroom at one point to Mr Trump on the bed in a t-shirt and boxers.
At the time of the alleged sexual encounter, Mr Trump and Melania were newlyweds, having married just over a year earlier in January 2005.
Their son Barron Trump was born in March 2006 – just four months before the alleged affair.
At the start of the trial, the former president complained that his ongoing criminal trial in Manhattan would cause him to miss Barron’s high school graduation ceremony on 17 May.
New York Justice Juan Merchan has allowed the trial to adjourn that day to let him attend.
Despite saying that he needs the day off for the family occasion, Mr Trump is now planning to deliver a keynote address at a fundraiser for the Minnesota Republican party that day, according to KFGO.
Melania’s name has cropped up in previous testimony during the trial.
Former longtime Trump aide Hope Hicks told the court last week that Mr Trump “was concerned about the story” regarding his alleged affair with former Playboy model Karen McDougal.
“He was concerned how it would be viewed by his wife, and he wanted me to make sure that the newspapers weren’t delivered to their residence that morning,” she said last week.
Mr Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records related to his former attorney Michael Cohen’s $130,000 payment to Ms Daniels.
The so-called “hush money” payment sought to buy her silence about their alleged 2006 affair in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election.
Mr Trump’s reimbursement payments to Cohen were falsely labelled as “legal expenses,” according to prosecutors.