Trump hush money trial live updates: Witness testimony to resume

Donald Trump’s defense attorney Susan Necheles on Thursday accused Stormy Daniels of slowly altering the details of an alleged 2006 sexual encounter with Trump, trying to persuade judges that a key prosecution witness in the former president’s hush money trial cannot be believed.

As the jury looked on, the two women traded barbs about what Necheles said were inconsistencies in Daniels’ description of the encounter with Trump in a hotel room. He denies the whole story.

But despite all the talk about what may have happened in that hotel room, despite the discomfiting testimony by the adult film actor that she consented to sex in part because of a “power imbalance,” the case against Trump doesn’t rise or fall on whether her account is true or even believable. It’s a trial about money changing hands — business transactions — and whether those payments were made to illegally influence the 2016 election.