NEW YORK — The judge presiding over Donald Trump’s trial fined him $1,000 on Monday and warned that future gag order violations could send him to prison, as jurors heard detailed testimony for the first time about financial reimbursements. at the center of the case.
The testimony of Jeffrey McConney, former controller of the Trump Organization, provided a rote but vital recitation of how the company reimbursed payments intended to prevent embarrassing stories from emerging during the 2016 presidential campaign and then recorded them as legal expenses in a manner which Manhattan prosecutors said broke the law.
McConney’s appearance on the witness stand came as the first criminal trial involving a former American president entered its third week of testimony. His account lacked the human drama offered Friday by longtime Trump adviser Hope Hicks, but it still provided important fodder for prosecutors trying to pull back the curtain on what they say was a cover-up of corporate transaction records. intended to protect Trump’s presidential candidacy. during a crucial stretch of the race.
At the heart of the testimony, and the case itself, is a $130,000 payment from Trump’s personal lawyer and mediator Michael Cohen to porn actress Stormy Daniels to hush up her allegations of an extramarital sexual encounter with Trump a decade earlier. .
The 34 criminal counts of falsifying business records accuse Trump of labeling money paid to Cohen in his company records as legal fees. Prosecutors say that by paying him rent and giving him more to account for his taxes, Trump executives were able to hide the refund.
McConney and another witness testified that the refund checks were taken from Trump’s personal account. However, even as jurors witnessed the checks and other documentary evidence, prosecutors did not obtain testimony Monday showing that Trump himself dictated that the payments be recorded as legal expenses, a designation that prosecutors say is intentionally misleading.
McConney acknowledged during questioning that Trump never asked him to record the reimbursements as legal expenses nor discussed the matter with him. And another witness, Deborah Tarsoff, an accounts payable supervisor for the Trump Organization, said under questioning that she did not get permission from Trump himself to cut the checks in question.
“Did you ever have any reason to believe that President Trump was hiding something or anything?” asked Trump lawyer Todd Blanche.
“Correct,” Tarasoff responded.
The testimony followed a stern warning from Judge Juan M. Merchan that additional violations of a gag order prohibiting Trump from inflammatory comments outside the courtroom about witnesses, jurors and others closely connected to the case could result in prison time. .
The $1,000 fine imposed Monday marks the second time since the trial began last month that Trump has been sanctioned for violating the gag order. He was fined $9,000 last week, $1,000 for each of nine violations.
“It appears that $1,000 fines are no deterrent. Therefore, going forward, this court will have to consider a sanction of imprisonment,” Merchan said before jurors were led into the courtroom. Trump’s statements, the judge added, “threaten to interfere with the fair administration of justice and constitute a direct attack on the rule of law. I cannot allow this to continue.”
Trump sat in his chair, glowering at the judge as he delivered the ruling. When the judge finished speaking, Trump shook his head twice and crossed his arms.
However, even as Merchan warned of the prison sentence in his most incisive and direct admonition, he also made clear his reservations about a measure he described as a “last resort”.
“The last thing I want is to put you in jail,” Merchan said. “You are the former president of the United States and possibly the next president as well. There are many reasons why incarceration is truly a last resort for me. Taking this action would be disruptive to these proceedings.”
The latest breach stems from an April 22 interview with the television channel Real America’s Voice, in which Trump criticized the speed with which the jury was chosen and claimed, without evidence, that it was filled with Democrats.
Once testimony resumed, McConney recounted conversations with former Trump Organization finance chief Allen Weisselberg in January 2017 about reimbursing Cohen for a $130,000 payment intended to buy Daniels’ silence about his reporting. of a sexual encounter on a 2006 celebrity golf outing in Lake Tahoe, California.
Weisselberg “said we needed to get Michael some money, we had to reimburse him. He threw a pad at me and I started writing down what he said,” McConney testified.
“He kind of threw the pad at me and said, ‘Write this down,’” said McConney, who worked for Trump’s company for about 36 years, retiring last year after being granted immunity from testifying for the prosecution in the New Trump Organization Board. York criminal tax fraud trial.
A bank statement shown in court showed Cohen paying $130,000 to Keith Davidson, Daniels’ attorney, on Oct. 27, 2016, from an account at an entity Cohen created for that purpose.
Weisselberg’s handwritten notes describe a plan to pay Cohen $420,000, which included a basic refund that was then doubled to reflect anticipated taxes, as well as a $60,000 bonus and an expense that prosecutors described as a technology contract.
McConney’s own notes, made on the notepad he said Weisselberg threw at him, were also shown in court. After calculations that predicted Cohen would receive $35,000 a month for 12 months, McConney wrote, “monthly transfer from DJT.”
Asked what that meant, McConney said, “That came out of the president’s personal bank account.”
Trump is accused of falsifying business records by labeling money paid to Cohen in his company records as legal fees. Prosecutors claim that by paying him rent and giving him more to account for his taxes, Trump executives were able to hide the refund.
McConney testified that he instructed an employee in the accounting department to record the reimbursements to Cohen as legal expenses.
But McConney acknowledged under questioning that Trump never directed him to record Cohen’s payments as legal expenses, nor did Weisselberg convey to him that Trump wanted them recorded that way.
“Allen never told me that,” McConney testified. In fact, McConney said he never spoke to Trump about the refund issue. Defense attorney Emil Bove also suggested to McConney that the “legal expenses” label was not dubious because Cohen was actually a lawyer.
“OK,” McConney responded, prompting laughter throughout the courtroom. “Of course.”
After paying the first two checks to Cohen through a trust fund, the remainder of the checks, starting in April 2017, were paid from Trump’s personal account, McConney testified.
With Trump, the only signatory to that bill, now in the White House, the change in funding source required “a whole new process for us,” McConney added.
Tarasoff, the other witness who testified on Monday, said that once Trump became president, payments from his personal account had to first be delivered, via FedEX, to his new residence in Washington.
“We would send them to the White House for him to sign,” she said.
The checks would then be returned with Trump’s signature. “I would separate them, mail the check and file the backup,” she said, referring to putting the invoice into the Trump Organization’s filing system.
Prosecutors continue to move toward their star witness, Cohen, who pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the hush money payments. He is expected to be subjected to a scathing cross-examination by defense lawyers seeking to undermine his credibility with jurors.
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Tucker reported from Washington.
