A lawyer for Stormy Daniels, the adult film star central to former President Trump’s hush money trial, said Friday that Trump’s recent conviction “hit her hard.”
“I got a pretty instant report from the courthouse,” Attorney Clark Brewster said in an interview on NewsNation’s “Elizabeth Vargas Reports. “And so, it hadn’t hit the news yet when I told her, really. And, she was really kind of taken aback.”
“I think it was the culmination of a lot of things — the finality of it and, you know, the worry and nervousness that she had throughout leading up to this,” he added, but said she didn’t express any “true happiness” over the results. “It was more or less a relief that it’s over.”
Trump became the first former president to acquire the status of convicted felon Thursday, when a 12-person jury found him guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records in relation to a hush money payment made to Daniels in 2016 to buy her silence of an alleged past affair.
Brewster suggested his client may have even been surprised by the verdict.
“The finality of it really hit her hard,” he said. “And we had a — a great talk. I told her how proud I was of her for what she’s been through.”
Brewster previously noted that Daniels wore a bulletproof vest up until the moment she entered the Manhattan courthouse to testify in the high-stakes trial. Daniels has also claimed she took the money because she feared for her life.
“She was concerned about the security coming into New York,” Brewster said in an appearance on CNN’s “AC360.” “She wore a bulletproof vest every day until she got to the courthouse.”
“I can tell you that before she came on Sunday, I mean, she cried herself to sleep,” he continued. “She was paralyzed with fear, not of taking the stand or telling her story, but what some nut might do to her. And I’m genuinely concerned about it as well.”
Trump now faces a July 11 sentencing date set by Judge Juan Merchan, which comes just days before he’s set to become the official GOP presidential nominee at the Republican National Convention. The former president railed against the judge and trial after he was convicted.
“This was a rigged, disgraceful trial,” Trump said. ” The real verdict is going to be Nov. 5 by the people, and they know what happened here, and everybody knows what happened here.”
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