“Wow. That’s not how I would put it. The sex in the films is very much real, just like what happened to me in that room,” Daniels replied, referring to her alleged time in his hotel room at a 2006 golf tournament.
Necheles then asked the actress if she had much experience memorising fictional stories and if she was telling a story about Trump.
“If that story was untrue, I would’ve written it to be a lot better,” she snapped back.
Necheles also implied Daniels was incapable of being shocked by the sight of Trump in his underwear in the hotel room because she has worked on so many adult films.
“You’ve acted and had sex in over 250 porn movies,” Necheles said, prompting Daniels to reply that she had worked on around 150 adult films.
Necheles then pressed Daniels: “And there are naked men and naked women having sex in those movies. And according to you, seeing a man and T-shirt and boxers was so offending that you got lightheaded and nearly fainted?”
“Yes,” Daniels relied.
“It was Mr Trump on the bed, an older man sitting there. I was not expecting him to be there. If I came out of the bathroom and it was not my husband, but Mr Trump instead, I would probably have the same reaction.”
When asked Necheles if she wanted money from Trump, Daniels said, “No” and that she “never asked for money” from him or anyone else.
“No, I never asked for money from anyone in particular. I asked for money to tell my story,” she said.
After Daniels said that she entered negotiations over a nondisclosure agreement to keep her silent and accepted an offer, Necheles pressed her on whether she was going to do a press conference.
“You could have done a press conference?” Necheles asked.
Daniels said, “I chose to be safe.”
“You chose to make money, right?” Necheles asked.
Daniels replied, “I chose to take the nondisclosure.”
Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
The case centres upon the allegation of a $130,000 (£104,000) payment to Daniels by Cohen.
She was paid by Trump’s lawyer to prevent her claims of a sexual encounter with the businessman from surfacing in the final days of the 2016 election race.
Prosecutors say Trump then paid back his lawyer and obscured the true nature of such payments in internal business documents.
The businessman has denied having a sexual encounter with Daniels – as well as Playboy model Karen McDougal – and his lawyers argue that the payments to Cohen were legitimate legal expenses.
If found guilty, he could face up to four years in prison.
The trial continues.
