Trump tri­al: Stormy Daniels lawyer balks at term ‘hush mon­ey’

An attor­ney for porn star Stormy Daniels tes­ti­fied at Don­ald Trump‘s tri­al Thurs­day that he “would nev­er” describe the $130,000 pay­ment to her as “hush mon­ey.”
Tes­ti­mo­ny from Daniels’s for­mer attor­ney Kei­th David­son is viewed as a key com­po­nent of the prosecution’s case that Trump and his allies plot­ted to hide dam­ag­ing sto­ries in the lead-up to the 2016 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. As pros­e­cu­tors ques­tioned him from the stand on Thurs­day, the porn star’s attor­ney made a sur­pris­ing dis­pute of the def­i­n­i­tion of the “hush mon­ey.”
“Would you use the phrase hush mon­ey to describe the mon­ey that was paid to your client by Don­ald Trump?” pros­e­cu­tor Joshua Ste­in­glass asked.
“I would nev­er use that word,” David­son said, adding he would describe it as a “con­sid­er­a­tion in a civ­il set­tle­ment.” Trump denies hav­ing a sex­u­al encounter with Daniels.
The descrip­tion of the alleged sex­u­al enco …