During her testimony in Donald Trump’s criminal trial this week, porn star Stormy Daniels recounted how a sexual encounter in 2006 led to her $130,000 hush money payment from Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen before the 2016 presidential election. Trump is charged with falsifying business records to cover up that payment.
But Trump denies that the two ever had sex, tweeting in May 2018 that the financial “agreement was used to stop the false and extortionist accusations made by her about an affair.”
Jurors might not know who to believe, but there are at least two alleged witnesses who could potentially reveal the truth.
One is Trump’s longtime and ubiquitous bodyguard Keith Schiller. Daniels has claimed in testimony that the former New York City cop approached her at a golf charity event on Lake Tahoe right after she met Trump “in the gift room where celebrities would come through.” Schiller said Trump wanted to have dinner with Daniels and he allegedly helped facilitate her visit to Trump’s hotel suite, where the two had sex, she testified.
As proof, Daniels also testified, she gave Schiller her cellphone number, he texted her, and she has saved it in her address book all this time under “Keith Trump.”
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The other is Alana Evans, a retired porn actress and friend of Daniels, who says she ran into Daniels in Lake Tahoe and that Daniels invited her to join her and Trump for dinner at his lavish hotel suite.
‘Oh come on Alana, let’s have some fun!’
In a first-person tell-all article in Rolling Stone last year, Evans said Daniels emailed, texted and ultimately called her from Trump’s suite asking her to come over and join them. Trump himself even interjected, she wrote, and said into the phone, “Oh come on, Alana, let’s have some fun! Let’s have some fun! Come to the party, we’re waiting for you.”
Whether the prosecution plans to call Schiller or Evans as a witness isn’t known, mostly because Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and his team haven’t publicly shared the witness list.
But veteran defense attorney Gene Rossi said Trump’s defense team made a critical strategic error this week by placing so much importance on denying that the alleged tryst ever happened, thus making it a test of Daniels’ credibility − and Trump’s as well − in the eyes of the jury.
“You made all this up, right?” Trump lawyer Susan Necheles asked Daniels during one particularly combative exchange on Thursday. “No,” Daniels responded forcefully.
Overall, Necheles spent several hours broadly attempting to portray Daniels as a liar who fabricated the story to make money off Trump.
But under direct examination from prosecutors, Daniels provided a wealth of detail about the alleged event. That included descriptions of the hotel suite, about Trump’s greeting her at the door in silky pajamas and the golden tweezers she found in his bathroom.
At one point, Daniels testified that while she did not feel physically threatened by being in a hotel suite with Trump in his underwear, “I did note there was a bodyguard right outside the door.”
Rossi, a former Justice Department official who has taken dozens of cases to trial, said such details will be very powerful for a jury as it assesses the overall credibility of Trump, Daniels and the defense lawyers and prosecutors.
“There’s no way in my mind that the jury is not going to believe all that detail, or that she made up the rolled-up magazine that she hit him in the behind with and his entreaties to get her into the room,” Rossi said.
The jury was also shown a photo of Daniels with Trump.
If subpoenaed and compelled to testify, Schiller could clear up some of the discrepancies between Trump’s and Daniels’ account, Rossi said, noting that he would be speaking under threat of prosecution for perjury.
“They would just ask him, ‘Did you ask escort Miss Daniels to the hotel room? Did you give Miss Daniels your cellphone number? Have you done this in other cases? Is this something you normally do for Mr. Trump?” Rossi said. “He could provide a lot of things.”
A request for ‘all emails’ between Schiller and a Trump executive
Spokespersons for the Manhattan DA’s office had no immediate comment as to whether they planned to call either Schiller or Evans to the stand, or anyone else who might shed light on which of the two contradictory stories to believe. The DA’s office has been tight-lipped about potential witnesses, refusing even to share the names with Trump’s lawyers because they fear Trump will attack them publicly, as he already has done to Daniels and Cohen.
Court records show that the DA’s office did issue a subpoena for Schiller’s communications, and that Trump defense lawyers rejected the demand for all emails between Schiller and Trump’s long-standing executive assistant Rhona Graff, and other communications, as being too broad. The records did not specify what prosecutors were seeking.
Trump spokesman Steven Cheung did not respond to calls and emails seeking comment about Evan’s claims. Schiller could not be reached for comment and a law firm for the Trump Organization that has represented Schiller in the past, Schertler Onorato Mead & Sears, had no initial comment.
A rendezvous with ‘The Apprentice star himself’
While not a potentially direct eyewitness like Schiller, Evans also could provide key testimony based on her 2023 Rolling Stone article.
In it, she describes how she ran into Daniels in Lake Tahoe and how Daniels told her and a friend about the charity golf tournament, and about Trump, “the Apprentice star himself… who she said had actually sought her out.”
“Stormy mentioned she’d later be joining Trump for a party and said I should accompany her,” Evans wrote. She agreed initially, but then declined to respond to numerous texts and emails from Daniels.
“While I wanted to support my friend, I was nervous about what could happen. Too many movies taught me that sometimes bad things happen to girls like me when we get involved with men like Donald Trump,” she wrote, in an apparent reference to Trump’s past high-profile affairs with women.
Evans said Daniels continued to send texts and calls to her from Trump’s suite, “each more pressing than the last.”
“After about five or six calls, one came in that was different from the others. This time at the other end of the line was not just my neighbor and friend, Stormy, but a voice I recognized all too easily: Donald Trump,” Evans wrote. “As Stormy pressed me on when I was coming, Trump interrupted her, beckoning me to join them. … The man I grew up watching on television was saying my name and asking me to join them. I can still hear his voice in my head. It was at that moment I made a choice that would later change my life in ways I never expected: I chose to stay away.”
Evans did not return calls and messages to the Adult Performance Artists Guild (APAG), which lists her as president.
