NEW YORK — The prosecution’s main witness has not yet spoken in Donald Trump’s secret trial. But jurors are already listening to Michael Cohen’s words as prosecutors work to directly link Trump to payments to silence women with damaging allegations about him before the 2016 election.
The second week of testimony in the case will end on Friday, after jurors heard potentially crucial evidence: a recording of Trump and Cohen, then his lawyer, discussing a plan to pay off a former Playboy model who claimed to have an affair . with Trump. The former president denies the affair.
Prosecutors have spent the week using detailed testimony about meetings, email exchanges, business transactions and bank accounts to build the foundation of their case accusing the presumptive Republican presidential nominee of a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election. setting for the crucial testimony of Cohen, who paid porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000 for his silence before he was arrested in the hush money scheme.
Trump’s defense has worked to poke holes in the credibility of prosecutors’ witnesses and show that Trump was trying to protect his reputation and family — not his campaign — by keeping women quiet. The defense also suggested, when questioning a lawyer who represented two women in secret money negotiations, that Trump was, in fact, the victim of extortion.
The recording played on Thursday was secretly made by Cohen just before the 2016 election. Cohen is heard telling Trump about a plan to buy the rights to former Playboy model Karen McDougal’s story from the National Enquirer so that it would never be disclosed. The tabloid had previously bought McDougal’s story to bury it on Trump’s behalf.
At one point during the recording, Cohen revealed that he had spoken with the Trump Organization’s then-chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, about “how to set everything up with financing.”
Trump can be heard responding: “How much do we have to pay for this? A fifth?”
Trump suggested the payment be made in cash, which prompted Cohen to object, repeatedly saying “no.” Trump then says “check” before the recording stops.
Prosecutors played the recording after calling to the stand Douglas Daus, a forensic analyst with the Manhattan district attorney’s office who performed analysis on iPhones that Cohen turned over to authorities during the investigation. Daus will return to the stand on Friday morning and it is unclear who will follow him.
Jurors also heard more than six hours of crucial testimony this week from Keith Davidson, a lawyer who represented McDougal and Daniels in their dealings with Cohen and the National Enquirer — the tabloid that bought and buried negative stories in an industry practice known as “ catch- and kill. Davidson on Thursday described being shocked that his hidden efforts could have contributed to Trump winning the 2016 election.
“What did we do?” Davidson sent a text message to the then-editor of the National Enquirer on election night, when it became clear that Trump would win. “Oh my God,” the tabloid editor responded.
“There was an understanding that our efforts may have in some way – get this – our activities may have in some way helped Donald Trump’s presidential campaign,” Davidson told jurors.
Trump’s lawyers sought earlier in the day to mitigate the potential harm of Davidson’s testimony by having him acknowledge that he never had any interactions with Trump — only with Cohen. In fact, Davidson said, he had never been in the same room as Trump until his testimony.
“I have had no personal interactions with Donald Trump. It came from my clients, Mr. Cohen or some other source, but certainly not him,” Davidson said.
Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsifying the Trump Organization’s internal business records. The charges stem from invoices and checks that were considered legal expenses in Trump Organization records when prosecutors say they were actually reimbursements to Cohen for paying $130,000 in hush money to Daniels.
