Testimony will resume on Monday morning from the former president donald trumpsecret money trial, after sometimes heated and sometimes emotional testimony from the main witnesses last week.
It was not immediately clear who Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office plans to call Monday as its 10th witness. The prosecutor’s office has kept this information secret, telling the New York state judge Juan Merchan fears Trump could post about the witnesses on social media.
Merchan met Trump at criminal contempt last week for violating a gag order that prevented him from making “public statements about known or reasonably foreseeable witnesses regarding their potential participation in the investigation or this criminal proceeding.” The breaches included posts about two likely witnesses, Trump’s former lawyer michael cohen and adult film star Stormy Danielsboth of which are at the heart of the prosecutor’s case.
Merchan fined Trump $9,000, which he paid on Thursday, a source with direct knowledge of the situation said.
Last week brought dramatic testimony from Trump’s former top adviser I hope Hicks It is Keith Davidson, a lawyer who represented Daniels and Karen McDougal, women who say they had sexual encounters with Trump, who was married in 2006. Trump has denied their allegations. Both received six-figure payments to keep quiet about their claims during the 2016 presidential campaign.
McDougal, former Playboy model, received $150,000 from publisher National Enquirer David Pecker, and Cohen paid Daniels $130,000. Trump ended up reimbursing Cohen through payments that the prosecutor says were falsely labeled as legal fees. He begged innocent to all 34 counts of falsifying business records.
Hicks, a former longtime Trump aide, broke down in tears as she answered a question about first going to work for Trump’s company in 2014. She testified that Trump told her he didn’t know about Cohen’s payment because he kept it to himself. She indicated that she was skeptical of this claim.
“I didn’t know Michael was an especially charitable or altruistic person. He’s the kind of person who seeks credit,” she said. Under cross-examination, she also said that he often tried to insert himself into the campaign, which angered campaign staff. “He liked to call himself ‘fixer’ or ‘Mr. Fix it,’ and it was only because he broke it first that he could come and fix it,” she said.
Davidson testified about his dealings with Pecker and Cohen, who he said complained to him in December 2016 that Trump had not yet reimbursed him for the hush payment.
Davidson, who was rather monotonous for most of his two days of testimony, got into some heated arguments with Trump lawyer Emil Bove, who pressed him about clients in other countries. salacious tabloid stories who he has been involved with over the years, including a person who allegedly leaked information about actor Lindsay Lohan’s stint in rehab, clients who sold sex tapes featuring wrestlers Hulk Hogan and influencer Tila Tequila and several complaints involving actor Charlie Sheen.
Davidson was evasive in his responses to Bove, saying he could not remember the details. “I’ve had over 1,500 clients in my career,” he said.
Prosecutor Matthew Colangelo said in his opening statement that Trump, Cohen and Pecker conspired in an attempt to influence the 2016 election and that Trump “covered up this criminal conspiracy by repeatedly lying in his New York business records.”
Trump attorney Todd Blanche said in his opening statement that the nondisclosure agreements are legal and that there was nothing criminal about Trump’s payments to Cohen. As for the conspiracy allegations, Blanche said: “I have a spoiler alert: there is nothing wrong with trying to influence an election. This is called democracy.”
This article was originally published in NBCNews. with
