'Backfired': Expert says Trump's lawyers just made a 'huge mistake' at criminal trial
Donald Trump's defense's offensive tactic of "slut shaming" porn star Stormy Daniels to sway the jury blew up in their faces, according to one expert.
MSNBC legal analyst and former trial attorney Katie Phang exposed the attorneys' purported blind spot in their futile efforts to prove Daniels to be a truth-challenged strumpet.
"I think what backfired for the defense was you thought maybe using a female lawyer like Susan Necheles would take the edge off," she said during an interview on MSNBC. "I've done it in my career as a trial lawyer. I've been the one who had to cross-examine a female witness."
ALSO READ: Trump’s Manhattan trial could determine whether rule of law survives: criminologist
"But in this instance it backfired: to slut shame Stormy Daniels was a huge mistake. Why? it just further buttressed the idea that that this is why Donald Trump wanted to hide it from America."
Necheles fired off a series of questions to Daniels to suggest she's a money-hungry liar.
“You made all this up, right?” Necheles asked Daniels.
“No,” Daniels answered.
While Daniels admitted she wasn't coerced to have sex with Trump with drugs or force she confided, “My own insecurities, in that moment, kept me from saying 'No.'”
Necheles asked, "You’ve acted and had sex in over 200 porn movies, right? And there are naked men and women having sex, including yourself, in those movies?”
She added: “But according to you, seeing a man sitting on a bed in a T-shirt and boxers was so upsetting that you got lightheaded.”
Former President Donald Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34-counts of falsifying business records while attempting to cover-up $130,000 in hush money to Daniels in an effort to manipulate the 2016 election.
Trump also denies the two ever had sex.
For Phang, the defense made an amplified that supposed lurid sex between Trump and Daniels — that it was condom-less and missionary style — into a vulnerability simply by shaming the woman for her choice in profession.
It makes it all the more believable to a jury, she said.
"In the instance that there was this insinuation or outright suggestion by the defense that there was something wrong or flawed with Stormy Daniels because of what she does for a living, then of course that would be the reason somebody like Donald Trump would want to hide that so that it would not hurt his campaign."