Trump hush money trial: Michael Cohen testifies

Michael Cohen testified Monday that Donald Trump warned him that “be prepared, there will be a lot of women coming forward” as soon as Trump announced he was running for president.

Cohen’s revelation came on his first day testifying at Trump’s criminal hush-money trial in New York.

Once slavishly devoted to Trump as his personal lawyer and fixer, Cohen is now his open enemy and could be the key witness against him in the case.

The 57-year-old will tell jurors how he paid porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000 shortly before the 2016 presidential election in exchange for her silence about a one-night stand she had with Trump a decade earlier.

Trump’s reimbursement of Cohen for that payout while serving in the White House is the basis for the Manhattan District Attorney’s case against the ex-president.

The Trump Organization reported the Daniels-related fees to Cohen as legal fees. But District Attorney Alvin Bragg claims this was a crime — falsification of corporate records — committed by Trump to hide the fact that the hush money had protected his then-faltering presidential candidate at a key moment.

Trump, who denies having sex with Daniels, says the crime allegations are bogus. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee is calling them an attempt by a Democratic prosecutor to damage his chances of winning the upcoming elections against President Joe Biden.

In addition to making the payment to Daniels, Cohen was deeply involved in arranging another hush money payment to Playboy model Karen McDougal by the publisher of the National Enquirer in 2016 in exchange for her story about an affair with Trump.

Cohen testified that when Trump announced he would run for the White House in 2015, it became clear that the married real estate mogul was taking his secret personal life into account.

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

Cohen replied, “Yes.”

“What did he say?” Hoffinger asked.

Cohen responded that Trump said, “You know if this comes out, that is, the announcement, be prepared, a lot of women are going to come forward.” “A

As Cohen began testifying Monday, telling jurors about his personal and professional background, Trump listened with his eyes closed, just as he has done when other witnesses in the case took the stand.

“How many times would you say you met or spoke to him during the time you worked there for Mr. Trump,” Hoffinger asked Cohen.

Cohen responded, “Every day, and several times a day.” Â Â

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

“There were some great times and some not-great times, but for the most part I enjoyed the responsibilities that were given to me, I enjoyed my colleagues, the Trump children,” Cohen said, as Trump’s son Eric Trump joined him from the courtroom stared intently. gallery.

“It was a big family.”

Cohen later explained how he encrypted the Signal app to communicate with David Pecker, then-CEO of American Media, publisher of the National Enquirer, and Pecker’s lieutenant Dylan Howard.

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

He testified that Trump and Pecker met in August 2015, and “What was discussed was the power of the National Enquirer which was at the checkout counter of so many grocery stores and bodegas that if we could run positive stories about Trump that would be helpful and if we could post negative stories about some other candidates, that could be helpful.”

Cohen said Pecker offered to alert Trump to any negative stories about Trump so he could prevent them from being published.

In June 2016, Pecker and Howard warned Cohen that Playboy model McDougal was interested in selling her story about an affair with Trump to news media, Cohen testified.

Cohen said the impact of McDougal making her story public could be “significant,” and that he “immediately” informed Trump after hearing about it from the US media.

“She’s really beautiful,” Trump said of McDougal when Cohen told him what Pecker and Howard had said.

“Okay, but she’s shopping a story,” Cohen responded Monday, according to his testimony.

Trump then asked his fixer to ensure that McDougal’s report was not published, Cohen testified.

Cohen then backed up Pecker’s earlier testimony, in which he told Trump it would cost $150,000 to “verify” McDougal’s story.

“No problem, I’ll take care of it,” Trump told Pecker, according to Cohen.

Pecker and Howard also published negative stories in the Enquirer about Trump’s main opponents in the Republican Party, Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, and about Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate.

“Some of the negative messages I received from David or Dylan were Hillary Clinton wearing thick glasses, accusations that she had a brain injury, Ted Cruz’s photo of his father with Lee Harvey Oswald claiming he was involved in the assassination at JFK, articles about Marco Rubio in the pool with some guys, him having some kind of drug binge,” Cohen testified. “A.M.I [American Media] would forward the cover story and I would show it to Mr. Trump and he knew that David was loyal and on board and did everything he said he would do at the August meeting, and he actually did it.

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

“That’s fantastic, that’s incredible,” Trump said, according to Cohen.

Cohen, who has said in the past that he had “blind loyalty” to Trump while working for him, is expected to testify in Manhattan Supreme Court in several days.

After Hoffinger completes her first round of questioning, Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche will cross-examine Cohen.

Blanche is expected to address Cohen’s self-admitted history of lying — often in Trump’s service — and his federal criminal plea to tax crimes and campaign finance violations related to Stormy Daniels’ hush money payment.

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

On Friday, Blanche asked Judge Juan Merchan to impose a gag order on Cohen, who is an outspoken critic of Trump. The former president is under a silence order regarding witnesses in the case.

Merchan did not agree to gag Cohen, but he did tell Bragg’s prosecutor to let Cohen know the judge wanted him to stop making public statements about Trump or anything else in the case.

This is news development. Check back for updates.