The offices of Jimmy Kimmel Live! must be abuzz today.
For the second time in less than a week, Jimmy Kimmel and his late-night show were brought up in former President Donald Trump’s ongoing hush money trial.
Stormy Daniels took the stand at Trump’s trial today, where she was asked during her testimony about her January 2018 appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!.
It was in that interview that Kimmel brought up a letter Daniels had allegedly signed denying she had an affair with Trump. When Kimmel asked whether the signature was authentic, Daniels gave a cagey reply that implied that it wasn’t.
Kimmel’s interview was first brought up in court on May 2nd when the prosecution entered into evidence text messages that Trump’s then-attorney Michael Cohen sent to Stormy Daniels’ lawyer Keith Davidson. In the texts, Cohen reacted with concern to Daniels’ appearance on Kimmel’s show.
Kimmel was giddy with excitement when his name came up in the trial last week, spending a good portion of that night’s monologue talking about it.
This time around, the prosecution asked Daniels about her appearance on Kimmel’s show and other media appearances she made at the time. “I was not to discuss the relationship or NDA,” Daniels recalled in court today. “It was to give an example of how I could go on and do promotions and things and not break the DNA.”
When asked about the statement that she allegedly signed, Daniels finally gave the direct answer Kimmel had been looking for back in 2018: The statement was false, but she did sign it.
“I signed it Stormy Daniels, but not how my Stormy Daniels signature is in any other time I had written it,” Daniels explained according to Lawfare’s Tyler McBrien, “as a tipoff to Jimmy Kimmel that I did not sign it willingly.”
Expect Jimmy Kimmel to take that tipoff, get the ball and run it down the court in his monologue tonight.
