Trump hush money trial: Michael Cohen testifies

Michael Cohen on Monday said he would be “devastating” to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign if porn actress Stormy Daniels went public with claims that she had a sexual relationship with the billionaire real estate mogul 10 years ago. He testified that he was concerned that there would be repercussions.

Cohen said Daniels had again misused her account, five years after Cohen, then a personal lawyer and fixer, first notified Trump of the potential for the story to become public. He said that Trump was very angry when he found out.

“‘I thought you took care of this,'” Cohen said Monday at Trump’s criminal hush money trial in Manhattan Supreme Court. “I thought I had this under control.”

“This is a disaster, an absolute disaster,” President Trump said. Women would hate me,” Cohen, 57, testified.

“‘People think it’s cool, but this is going to be a disaster for the campaign!'” Cohen said Trump was furious.

Mr. Cohen noted that at the time he learned that Mr. Daniels might be pitching the story of a one-night stand with Mr. Trump, then-Republican candidate Trump had “very low approval ratings with women.”

“This and the earlier Access Hollywood tape,” Cohen said, referring to the infamous recording of Trump bragging about kissing women and grabbing their genitals without their prior consent. President Trump testified that he was upset.

Earlier Monday, Cohen testified that when Trump announced he was running for president in 2015, he warned him that “if you’re prepared, a lot of women are going to come forward.”

Mr. Cohen also testified as follows: Secretly recording President Trump During a meeting about reimbursing the publisher of the National Enquirer, which paid a Playboy model $150,000 in hush money to buy her silence about an alleged affair with Trump.

Pay in cash,” Trump said in the recording, which was never refunded to the publisher.

Cohen’s revelations came on the first day of testimony in Trump’s hush money criminal trial in New York, where he detailed efforts to protect Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign from damage from salacious revelations. did.

Cohen, once fiercely devoted to Trump, is now Trump’s public enemy and could be a key witness against Trump in the case.

Mr. Cohen paid Mr. Daniels $130,000 just before the 2016 presidential election in exchange for his silence about Mr. Trump.

When prosecutors asked if he paid Daniels without “approval” from Trump, Cohen said no.

“I wanted my money back,” Cohen said, “because I needed Trump’s approval for everything.”

When Mr. Cohen told Mr. Daniels that he had paid the money, Mr. Trump responded, “Good, good,” Mr. Cohen testified.

Cohen said President Trump also told him, “Don’t worry, you’ll get your money back.”

Trump’s repayment of Cohen’s compensation while he was in the White House is the basis of the Manhattan district attorney’s lawsuit against the former president.

The Trump Organization reported Daniels-related reimbursements to Cohen as legal expenses, ultimately totaling $420,000 over 12 months.

But District Attorney Alvin Bragg argued that this amounted to a crime committed by Trump at a critical moment: falsifying business records to hide the fact that the hush money had protected the then-tobbling presidential candidate. .

President Trump denies having sex with Daniels and claims the felony charges are false. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee claims the incident is an effort by Democratic prosecutors to damage his chances of defeating President Joe Biden in the next election.

Trump’s lawyers feared the impact on Daniels’ family, especially his wife Melania, if the adult film actress went public with her story of having sex with Trump months after Cohen gave birth to Daniels. , suggesting that he forced Mr. Daniels to repay the debt. son Baron.

Cohen testified that at one point during the discussion about the hush money issue, he asked Trump, “What’s going to happen upstairs?” Reference to Melania Trump.

Donald Trump responded, “Don’t worry. How long do you think I’ll be on the market? Not very long,” Cohen testified.

In addition to the payments to Mr. Daniels, Mr. Cohen also said that in 2016, the publisher of the National Enquirer paid Playboy model Karen McDougal in exchange for articles on her, another key element of the case. He was also closely involved in arranging one hush money payment. The affair with Trump.

Mr. Cohen testified that it became clear that the married real estate mogul took his secret personal life into consideration when Mr. Trump was about to announce his bid for the White House in 2015.

“Has Mr. Trump expressed any concerns about negative stories about his personal life?” Assistant District Attorney Susan Hoffinger asked Mr. Cohen as Mr. Trump sat in the defense table.

Mr. Cohen replied, “Yes.”

“What did he say?” Mr. Hoffinger asked.

Cohen said Trump said, “‘When this comes out, when it comes out, be prepared, you know that there’s going to be a lot of women coming forward.'” I replied that I said so. ”

On Monday, as Cohen began testifying to jurors about his personal and professional background, President Trump closed his eyes and listened, just as other witnesses in the case took the stand. Ta.

Mr. Hoffinger asked Mr. Cohen: “How often do you think you met or spoke with Mr. Trump during your time working for him?”

Cohen answered, “Every day, and multiple times a day.”

He told prosecutors that working for Trump for more than a decade was “a great experience in many ways.”

“Sometimes he was great, sometimes he was not so great, but for the most part, he enjoyed the responsibilities he had and was a great supporter of his colleagues,” Trump’s son Eric Trump said as he stared at him in court. I had a great time with the Trump kids.” gallery.

“It was a big family.”

Mr. Cohen later used the app Signal to communicate with David Pecker, then CEO of American Media, publisher of the National Enquirer, and Mr. Pecker’s deputy, Dylan Howard. ” was encrypted.

Cohen said he used Signal when “it was a sensitive issue that I wanted to keep private.”

He testified that Trump and Pecker met in August 2015, saying, “The discussion was about the power of the National Enquirer, which stands at the cash register in so many supermarkets and liquor stores. , that it would be beneficial to publish positive stories about Mr. Trump.They could also publish negative articles about some of the other candidates, which could be beneficial. .”

Mr. Cohen said Mr. Pecker suggested that Mr. Trump be warned about potentially negative articles about Mr. Trump so that they could be blocked from publication.

In June 2016, Mr. Pecker and Mr. Howard alerted Mr. Cohen to the fact that Playboy model McDougal was interested in selling her account about her affair with Mr. Trump to news outlets, Mr. Cohen said. I testified.

Cohen said the repercussions of McDougal publishing his story could be “significant” and that he notified Trump “immediately” after hearing about it from the U.S. media.

“She’s really beautiful,” Trump said of McDougall, when Cohen told him about Pecker and Howard’s remarks.

“Okay, but she’s buying material,” Cohen said, according to testimony Monday.

Mr. Trump then asked Fixer to confirm that Mr. McDougal’s account was not public, Mr. Cohen testified.

Mr. Cohen also corroborated previous testimony that Mr. Pecker told Mr. Trump that it would cost $150,000 to “control” Mr. McDougal’s story.

Cohen said Trump told Pecker, “No problem. I’ll figure it out.”

But Mr. Trump did not repay Mr. Pecker, and the publisher was furious, Mr. Cohen testified.

During a meeting at a restaurant, Mr. Pecker told Mr. Cohen, “I want my money back,” Mr. Cohen testified.

“I said, ‘Mr. Trump said he would pay you back, and he will pay you back,'” Cohen testified.

Cohen said he then told Trump he was concerned that American Media had a file on him.

“And one of the concerns that I expressed to Mr. Trump is that if Mr. [Pecker] There’s a series of papers there that are relevant to you,” Cohen testified.

Hoffinger asked, “Was Mr. Trump concerned about that?”

“Yes,” Cohen replied.

He then said he recorded a conversation with President Trump in September 2016 about purchasing the rights to McDougal’s life story.

Cohen said he secretly recorded footage of President Trump “so that I could show it to David Pecker and listen to the conversation where he said he was going to pay the money, he was going to pay it back.”

“And I wanted him to remain loyal to Mr. Trump,” Cohen testified.

A recording of the conversation between Mr. Cohen and Mr. Trump was then played to jurors.

Cohen said of his involvement in getting American Media to buy McDougal’s story: “What I was doing was at the direction of Mr. Trump and for Mr. Trump’s benefit.” he said.

Pecker and Howard also published negative articles about President Trump’s main Republican opponents, Sens. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, and 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Published in the Quirer.

“Some of the negativity I’ve received from David and Dylan includes claims that Hillary Clinton, who wears thick glasses, has a brain injury, and Lee Harvey, who claims that Ted Cruz was involved in the JFK assassination. There were pictures of his father with Oswald, there were articles about Marco, etc. Rubio was at the pool with a couple of guys and had some kind of drug addiction,” Cohen testified.

“Ami [American Media] When I sent the cover story and I showed it to Mr. Trump, he knew that David was loyal and active and was doing everything he said he would do at the August meeting, and he actually did it. That’s what I was doing.”

Mr. Hoffinger asked Mr. Cohen if he remembered Mr. Trump’s reaction to these stories.

Cohen said President Trump said, “It’s amazing, it’s unbelievable.”

Cohen, who has said in the past that he had “blind loyalty” to Trump while working for him, is expected to testify over the next few days.

After Hoffinger’s initial questioning concludes, Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanche will cross-examine Cohen.

Blanche is expected to harshly criticize Cohen’s self-admitted false history (often to serve President Trump) and his federal criminal guilty plea to tax crimes and campaign finance violations related to hush money payments to Stormy Daniels. It will be done.

“He is a convicted felon. And he is a convicted perjurer. He is an admitted liar,” Blanche said of Cohen in his opening statement at the start of the trial.

On Monday, two U.S. senators, J.D. Vance of Ohio and Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, and representatives Nicole Malliotakis of New York, Steve Marshall of Alabama and Brianna Prominent Republicans, including state attorneys general, appeared in court to support Trump. Birds of Iowa.

“What’s happening in that courtroom is a threat to American democracy,” Vance told reporters.

On Friday, Blanche asked Judge Juan Marchand to place a gag order on Cohen, who has been an outspoken critic of Trump. The former president is subject to a gag order regarding witnesses in the case.

Mr. Marchan did not agree to gag Mr. Cohen, but asked Mr. Cohen that he wanted Mr. Bragg’s prosecution team to stop the judge from speaking publicly about Mr. Trump or other matters related to the case. I told him to tell me.

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