Stormy Daniels couldn’t resist taking another swipe at Donald Trump after her bombshell testimony in his hush-money trial after his defense team sought a change in his gag order to allow him to speak publicly about the porn star.
After Judge Juan Merchan on Thursday rejected the request to amend the order—which was imposed to prevent Trump from intimidating witnesses, jurors, and others connected to the trial—Daniels offered up some free, unsolicited advice about how Trump could respond to what she’d said in court. “Real men respond to testimony by being sworn in and taking the stand in court,” she wrote in a post on X. “Oh... wait. Nevermind.”
Trump has denied 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to hide payments to his former attorney and fixer Michael Cohen, which prosecutors claim were reimbursements for a $130,000 payment Cohen made to Daniels to buy her silence about an alleged affair.
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After Daniels testified—sometimes in graphic detail—in the trial this week, Trump’s legal team unsuccessfully asked for a mistrial, arguing that parts of what she’d told jurors was not relevant to the charges in the case. Todd Blanche, a lawyer for Trump, also asked for the gag order to be reined in so that Trump could talk publicly about Daniels now that her testimony is over.
“As we’ve said repeatedly, he needs an opportunity to respond to the American people,” Blanche said. Merchan denied the request, saying he was concerned with “protecting the integrity of the proceedings” and said the gag order was imposed to stop “very real, very threatening attacks on potential witnesses.” “The reason why the gag order is in place to begin with is precisely because of the nature of these attacks, the vitriol,” he said.
