At the hush-money trial of former president Donald Trump in Manhattan, Stormy Daniels’ story is, in a sense, a proxy battle for the actual debate about bookkeeping: If you believe Daniels’s accounting of the affair she alleges they had, then you must find Trump—who denies any such encounter—unbelievable. If you don’t believe Daniels, then it becomes much easier to accept the defense narrative that this is all one big con. The sexual encounter that Daniels described in precise and disturbing detail under oath this week is technically irrelevant to the questions at hand.