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NEW YORK — Donald Trump was intimately involved with all aspects of a scheme to stifle stories about sex that threatened to torpedo his 2016 campaign, his former lawyer said Monday in matter-of-fact testimony that went to the heart of the former president’s hush money trial.
“Everything required Mr. Trump’s sign-off,” said Michael Cohen, Trump’s fixer-turned-foe and the prosecution’s star witness in a case now entering its final, pivotal stretch.
In hours of highly anticipated testimony, Cohen placed Trump at the center of the hush money plot, saying the then-candidate had promised to reimburse the lawyer for the money he fronted and was constantly updated about behind-the-scenes efforts to bury stories feared to be harmful to the campaign.
John Santucci has the latest on the trial.
“Stop this from getting out,” Cohen, the prosecution’s star witness, quoted Trump as telling him in reference to porn actor Stormy Daniels’ account of a sexual encounter with Trump a decade earlier.
A similar episode occurred when Cohen alerted Trump that a Playboy model was alleging that she and Trump had an extramarital affair. “Make sure it doesn’t get released,” Cohen said Trump told him. The woman, Karen McDougal, was paid $150,000 in an arrangement that was made after Trump received a “complete and total update on everything that transpired.”
“What I was doing was at the direction of and benefit of Mr. Trump,” Cohen testified.
Cohen is by far the prosecution’s most important witness, and though his testimony lacked the electricity that defined Daniels’ turn on the stand, he nonetheless linked Trump directly to the payments and helped illuminate some of the drier evidence such as text messages and phone logs that jurors have seen.
The testimony of a witness with such intimate knowledge of Trump’s activities could heighten the legal exposure of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee if jurors deem him sufficiently credible. But prosecutors’ reliance on a witness with such a checkered past – Cohen pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the payments – also carries sizable risks with a jury and could be a boon to Trump politically as he fundraises off his legal woes and paints the case as the product of a tainted criminal justice system.
The men, once so close that Cohen boasted that he would “take a bullet” for Trump, had no visible interaction inside the courtroom. The sedate atmosphere was a marked contrast from their last courtroom faceoff, when Trump walked out of the courtroom in October after his lawyer finished questioning Cohen during his civil fraud trial.
This time around, Trump sat at the defense table with his eyes closed for long stretches of testimony as Cohen recounted his decade-long career as a senior Trump Organization executive, doing work that by his own admission sometimes involved lying and bullying others on his boss’s behalf.
Jurors had previously heard from others about the tabloid industry practice of “catch-and-kill,” in which rights to a story are purchased so that it can then be quashed. But Cohen’s testimony, which continues Tuesday, is crucial to prosecutors because of his direct communication with the then-candidate about embarrassing stories he was scrambling to suppress.
Cohen also matters because the reimbursements he received from a $130,000 hush money payment to Daniels, which prosecutors say was meant to buy her silence in advance of the election, form the basis of 34 felony counts charging Trump with falsifying business records. Prosecutors say the reimbursements were logged, falsely, as legal expenses to conceal the payments’ true purpose.
Under questioning from a prosecutor, Cohen detailed the steps he took to mask the payments. When he opened a bank account to pay Daniels, an action he said he told Trump he was taking, he said it was for a new limited liability corporation but withheld the actual purpose.
“I’m not sure they would’ve opened it,” he said, “if it stated: ‘to pay off an adult film star for a non-disclosure agreement.’”
To establish Trump’s familiarity with the payments, Cohen said Trump had promised to reimburse him and called him while the lawyer was on a December 2016 family vacation. Trump told him: “Don’t worry about that other thing. I’m going to take care of it when you get back.”
The two men even discussed with Allen Weisselberg, a former Trump Organization chief financial officer, how the reimbursements would be paid as “legal expenses” over monthly installments, Cohen testified.
And though Trump’s lawyers have said he acted to protect his family from salacious stories, Cohen described Trump as preoccupied instead by the impact they would have on the campaign. He said Trump implored him to delay finalizing the Daniels transaction until after Election Day so he wouldn’t have to pay her.
“Because,” Cohen testified, “after the election it wouldn’t matter” to Trump.
Cohen also gave jurors an insider account of his negotiations with David Pecker, the then-publisher of the National Enquirer, who was such a close Trump ally that Pecker told Cohen his publication maintained a “file drawer or a locked drawer” where files related to Trump were kept. That effort took on added urgency following the October 2016 disclosure of an “Access Hollywood” recording in which Trump was heard boasting about grabbing women sexually.
The Daniels payment was finalized several weeks after that revelation, but Monday’s testimony also centered on a deal earlier that fall with McDougal.
Cohen testified that he went to Trump immediately after the National Enquirer alerted him to a story about the alleged McDougal affair. “Make sure it doesn’t get released,” he said Trump told him.
Trump checked in with Pecker about the matter, asking him how “things were going” with it, Cohen said. Pecker responded: “‘We have this under control, and we’ll take care of this,’” Cohen testified.
Cohen also said he was with Trump as Trump spoke to Pecker on a speakerphone in his Trump Tower office.
“David stated it would cost $150,000 to control the story,” Cohen said. He quoted Trump as saying: “No problem, I’ll take care of it,” meaning that the payments would be reimbursed.
To lay the foundation that the deals were done with Trump’s endorsement, prosecutors elicited testimony from Cohen designed to show Trump as a hands-on manager. Acting on Trump’s behalf, Cohen said, he sometimes lied and bullied others, including reporters.
“When he would task you with something, he would then say, ‘Keep me informed. Let me know what’s going on,’” Cohen testified. He said that was especially true “if there was a matter that was troubling to him.”
Defense lawyers have teed up a bruising cross-examination of Cohen, telling jurors during opening statements that he’s an “admitted liar” with an “obsession to get President Trump.”
Prosecutors aim to blunt those attacks by acknowledging Cohen’s past crimes to jurors and by relying on other witnesses whose accounts, they hope, will buttress Cohen’s testimony. They include a lawyer who negotiated the hush money payments on behalf of Daniels and McDougal, as well as Pecker and Daniels.
Cohen’s role as star prosecution witness further cements the disintegration of a mutually beneficial relationship. After Cohen’s home and office were raided by the FBI in 2018, Trump showered him with affection on social media, praising him as a “fine person with a wonderful family” and predicting – incorrectly – that Cohen would not “flip.”
Months later, Cohen did exactly that, pleading guilty that August to federal campaign-finance charges in which he implicated Trump. By that point, the relationship was irrevocably broken, with Trump posting on the social media platform then known as Twitter: “If anyone is looking for a good lawyer, I would strongly suggest that you don’t retain the services of Michael Cohen!”
Cohen later admitted lying to Congress about a Moscow real estate project that he had pursued on Trump’s behalf during the heat of the 2016 campaign. He was sentenced to three years in prison, but spent much of it in home confinement.
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