Photo: Charly Triballeau Agence France-Presse Stormy Daniels leaves Manhattan court after testifying at Donald Trump's trial on May 9, 2024.
Sylvain Peuchmaurd – Agence France-Presse in London
Published at 9:22 Updated at 9:44
- United States
The former porn actress at the heart of the case that led to ex-president Donald Trump being found guilty in criminal court, Stormy Daniels, has called on the American justice system to incarcerate the Republican candidate, who she says has lost touch with reality.
“Put him in jail,” Stormy Daniels, 45, told the website of the British newspaper Daily Mirror, in her first interview since the New York court's decision.
“I think he should be sentenced to prison and community service for the less fortunate, or be a volunteer punching bag at a women's shelter,” she added, deeming the Republican candidate “completely and totally out of touch with reality.”
After two days of deliberations, the 12 jurors unanimously found Donald Trump guilty on Thursday of all 34 counts of falsifying accounting records, intended to hide a $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels to avoid a sex scandal just before the 2016 presidential election.
The former actress claims to have had a sexual relationship with Donald Trump 10 years earlier, an episode that Donald Trump fiercely denies.
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This unprecedented situation plunges the campaign for the November 5 presidential election between Democratic President Joe Biden and his Republican predecessor into uncertainty.
“Never finished”
Testifying in court “was so intimidating, with the jurors looking at you,” Stormy Daniels noted, “ but as I said before, I told the truth all the time.”
The testimony of the ex-actress, Stephanie Clifford, her real name, was one of the high points of the debates. She notably recounted in detail this sexual relationship, according to her consensual but where the “balance of power” was “unbalanced”.
“It’s not over for me “, “It will never be over for me,” she said. Although Trump may be found guilty, “I still have to live with this legacy.”
The former president faces up to four years in prison, possibly accompanied by a fine. But the judge could pronounce a prison sentence with suspended probation, or even community service.
“I don’t know what the sentence could be or what Trump will only understand,” she added in an analogy to how one punishes a child.
“You have to find the punishment that fits the crime, but is fair and affects that particular person,” she said, “who knows what that would be for Trump.”
Bulletproof vest
Since Donald Trump's conviction, Stormy Daniels had until then remained silent.
Her husband, Barrett Blade, and her lawyer, Clark Brewster, to whom she had left it to speak in the media, suggested that apprehension, even fear, were not foreign to this silence.
“She is still digesting” the verdict, and “now all the idiot Trumpists will fall on her on it,” Barrett Blade said on CNN.
To the journalist from a local channel who mentioned the “stress” of Stormy Daniels before her testimony in court, to which she went in “bulletproof vest”, the lawyer for his part replied that he rather it was “fear” that “someone would do something crazy.”
In a rambling speech Friday, Donald Trump called the trial “very unfair », or even faked but without providing the slightest proof. He promised to “appeal this scam” once the sentence was pronounced.
For his part, Joe Biden considered it “inconsiderate”, “dangerous”, “irresponsible for anyone to say that [this trial] was rigged simply because they don't like the verdict.”