Former federal prosecutor Charles Coleman on Friday predicted that former President Donald Trump’s lawyers will accuse porn star Stormy Daniels of attempting to blackmail him when she takes the witness stand.
Trump is currently on trial for 34 felony counts related to a $130,000 payment to Daniels for her silence about an alleged affair during his 2016 campaign. Coleman said on MSNBC’s “Chris Jansing Reports” that the former president’s lawyers will focus on how Daniels allegedly solicited the money from Trump in an immoral way, and said she will require coaching to portray herself in an ideal manner.
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“I do think, on cross we are going to see a different animal emerge,” Coleman told host Chris Jansing. “And what I mean by that is I expect that Donald Trump’s attorneys are going to drill into the fact that … at its core, this is about blackmail. You slept with a married man, who you likely knew was married, and then you wanted to get money from the fact that you didn’t want to go out and tell the fact that you had made this decision, and ultimately does that change what Donald Trump did? No. Is that the what the case is about? No.”
“But it is going to be something that I fully expect that the defense attorneys in this case are going to try to pummel her on as much as they can to detract from her overall credibility in front of the jury,” he added. “And I do think there may be some sympathy among the jurors around that to basically say, look, she does not come to the table with clean hands either, and who knows what sort of impact that will have in terms of their deliberations.”
Coleman then proceeded to detail how Daniels’ attorneys might prepare her to testify in the trial.
“Honestly, it’s not necessarily the narrative that you’re selling,” he said. “It’s more so the preparation around your demeanor, your attitude, your tone, your intonation, your responses in such a way that you don’t come across as overly defensive, rude or just nasty in front of the jury. That’s really what you spend the most time preparing your witness around.”
All 12 jurors have been selected for Trump’s trial and they consist of an investment banker, a security engineer with three kids, a retired man from Lebanon who likes fly fishing, a speech therapist, someone who works at an eyewear company, a California woman employed in product development and a physical therapist.
