In his first television interview since Donald Trump He was found guilty, Stormy Daniels said she was harassed and threatened after testifying at a woman’s hush-money trial in New York.
Speaking to MSNBC Raquel MaddowDaniels said that when Trump was found guilty, “for that brief moment it was worth it for me to testify because at first I wasn’t going to. I had to end my life. I was basically – by choice – isolated.”
But Daniels said that while her friends celebrated and texted her when the verdict came in and that “it was over,” for her, “it was just getting started. For every person who was excited and thrilled and congratulating me, there was another person who was very upset. And that just added fuel to the fire of some of the things I had been going through the whole time.”
Daniels said she was the victim of “doxing,” where personal information such as an address is maliciously posted online, while “my mailbox was destroyed. My animals were hurt. My daughter can’t go outside because there are press and onlookers. I’m afraid to go outside. I’m afraid to go outside and mow the lawn.”
She added that “the death threats are much more graphic, detailed and blatant, as if people don’t care, and it’s scary.”
During the trial, Daniels testified about her sexual encounter with Trump in 2006, giving a vivid and graphic description of how she met him at a celebrity golf course in Lake Tahoe and then joined him later in a hotel room. She told the jury about the shock she felt upon emerging from a bathroom and finding him partially clothed. They continued to have sex, and while it was consensual, she also made it clear that she did not enjoy it. She also said that Trump did not use a condom.
In the interview with Maddow, Daniels took issue with some reports of her testimony. Although some reports said she had “blacked out” during the encounter, she said she “blocked out” what had happened. She said therapists had told her it was a “defense mechanism” to block out a “terrible” experience.
“It’s much more common that you don’t remember these pieces than that you do,” she said. “And it made me feel a little bit better, in a sense a little bit more normal or a little bit more unhinged. But I’m not a liar.”
Trump has denied her allegations and characterized the trial as a political process. He was found guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records related to payments to Daniels to silence her. His sentencing is scheduled for Sept. 18.
During the interview, Maddow reviewed portions of Daniels’ testimony during the trial, which was not televised.
“The preparations for the trial were quite tough, like flying [to New York] “I would replay it over and over and sit in rooms and go over things and relive all those scary moments,” Daniels said. “I guess the only thing that kept me going was thinking there was an end in sight. And there isn’t.”
Daniels said she is a registered Republican and stressed that she was subpoenaed to testify and was not paid. “A lot of the hate mail I get is like, ‘Drop the charges.’ I didn’t sue him. I’m not getting anything.”
She defended her testimony and the decision to do so.
“I didn’t do anything but answer questions,” he said. “I didn’t go there and present an essay for a spoken word session at the theater, you know?”
She added: “For those who said it was uncomfortable to witness or hear, I lived it,” she said. “All you had to do was hear my version, which was for the public, on the stand. I had to relive it. I had to say it in court in front of all these people, knowing that it would be public record, that my daughter was going to read it, that everyone was going to read it.”
“Maybe this is too much for our conversation right now, but for all those people who like to bother me by talking about what his genitals look like, don’t you think for a second that I wish I could prove something else?” she told Maddow. “I wish he had a birthmark that looked like the state of Texas on his shoulder, you know, or a weird-looking mole. That’s the only thing that proves that I did it, that he took his clothes off in front of me.”
She also said Trump was “trying to make an example” of her, or “anyone who dares to stand up to him.” The former president is no longer subject to a censorship order that prevents him from attacking witnesses in the case.
“I am not afraid of what he might say about me or what he might call me. I am telling the truth. I am the only one who continues to tell the truth. I can prove everything I have said,” she said.