Stormy Daniels may seal Trump’s fate. How did a porn star become one of the most powerful people in politics?

One busy weekday night in May 2018, a Pittsburgh strip club dancer named Scarlet went to the bar for fries and ran into something unusual: a young man carrying a political non-fiction book conspicuously under his arm.

The book was Fire and Fury by Michael Wolff, about the first year of Donald Trump’s presidency, and the man – Isaac – was hoping that one of the other strippers would sign it for him.

“I’m not much of a strip club guy, but I had to come see this,” Isaac told The Pitt News as he waited in line behind a man carrying several bright red Trump hats.

These men were among the hundreds drawn to see porn performer Stormy Daniels as she danced across the country on her “Make America Horny Again” tour, closely followed by a political tempest over her alleged history with the serving president of the United States.

Just 10 minutes after the start of Ms Daniels’ first show in Pittsburgh, Mr Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani appeared to admit on Fox News that the mercurial tycoon had indeed authorised a hush money payment of $130,000 to his alleged ex-lover, contradicting previous denials.

Now Ms Daniels was again at the centre of a national firestorm when New York state prosecutors brought charges against Mr Trump, marking the first criminal prosecution against a former president in US history.

On 4 April 2023, Mr Trump was arrested and charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to conceal an alleged scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election through hush money payments to suppress stories about his alleged affairs with women – including Ms Daniels. At his arraignment in New York City, Mr Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges.

After another year of legal wrangling, the trial finally began with jury