Jury Hears Recording of Key Call in Trump Hush Money Trial

Jurors in Donald Trump’s hush money trial heard a recording of him discussing with his then-lawyer and personal adviser a plan to buy the silence of a Playboy model who said she had an affair with the former president.

A visibly irritated Trump leaned forward at the defense table, and jurors appeared fascinated as prosecutors played the September 2016 recording that lawyer Michael Cohen secretly made briefing his celebrity client on a plan to buy the story of an extramarital affair by Karen McDougal.

Although the recording came to light years ago, it is perhaps the most colorful evidence presented to the jury yet to connect Trump to the hush money payments at the center of his Manhattan criminal trial.

This followed hours of testimony from a lawyer who negotiated the silence deal for McDougal and admitted to being surprised that his under-the-radar efforts could have contributed to Trump’s victory in the White House.

“What have we done?” Attorney Keith Davidson sent a text message to the then-editor of the National Enquirer, who had buried stories of sexual encounters to prevent them from surfacing in the final days of the tight presidential race.

“Oh my God,” was Dylan Howard’s response.

“There was an understanding that our efforts may have helped Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in some way,” Davidson told jurors, although he acknowledged during cross-examination that he dealt directly with Cohen. and never Trump.

Davidson’s testimony was designed to directly connect the hush money payments to Trump’s presidential ambitions and bolster prosecutors’ argument that the case is about interference in the 2016 election and not simply about sex and money.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has sought to establish that link, not only to secure a conviction but also to persuade the public of the importance of the case, which may be the only one of the four Trump prosecutions that goes to trial. this year.

“This is kind of dark humor. It was election night when the results were known,” Davidson explained.

“There was a kind of surprise among broadcasters and others that Mr. Trump was leading in the polls, and there was a growing sense that people were about to call an election.”

Davidson is seen as a key piece to prosecutors’ case that Trump and his allies planned to bury unflattering stories in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election.

He represented both McDougal and porn actor Stormy Daniels in negotiations that resulted in the rights to her claims of sexual encounters with Trump being purchased and those stories being silenced, a tabloid industry practice known as “catch and kill.”

Davidson is one of multiple key players who testified before Cohen, the prosecution’s star witness who paid Daniels US$130,000 (NZ$220,000) for his silence and also recorded himself, weeks before the election, telling her to Trump about a plan to buy McDougal’s story so it would never come out.

At one point in the recording, Cohen revealed that he had spoken with the Trump Organization’s then-chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, about “how to organize everything with financing.”

‘How much do we have to pay for this? One fifty?’

To which Trump can be heard responding: “How much do we have to pay for this? One fifty?”

Trump can be heard suggesting that the payment be made in cash, prompting Cohen to object by saying “no” four times.

Trump can then be heard saying “check” before the recording cuts out.

Trump’s lawyers tried earlier in the day to mitigate the potential harm of Davidson’s testimony by having him acknowledge that he never had any interaction with Trump, only with Cohen.

In fact, Davidson said, he had never been in the same room as Trump until his testimony.

He also said he was unfamiliar with the Trump Organization’s record-keeping practices and that any impression he had of Trump himself came from others.

“I had no personal interactions with Donald Trump. It came from my clients, Mr. Cohen or some other source, but certainly not from him,” Davidson said.

The line of questioning from Trump lawyer Emil Bove appeared aimed at portraying Trump as excluded from the negotiations and suggesting that Cohen was handling the hush money matters on his own.

Bove also noted that Davidson had been involved in similar payments for clients that had nothing to do with presidential politics, questioning him about previous cases in which he requested money to suppress embarrassing stories, including one involving wrestler Hulk Hogan.

When Davidson negotiated payments to maintain the silence of McDougal and Daniels, Bove asked Davidson if he was “pretty well versed in getting to the line without committing extortion, right?”

“I had become familiar with the law,” Davidson responded.

Early Thursday (New York time), jurors saw a confidential agreement that requires Daniels to remain silent about her claims that she had a date with the married Trump a decade earlier.

The agreement, dated less than two weeks before the 2016 presidential election, called for her to receive $130,000 in exchange for her silence.

The money was paid by Cohen and the agreement referred to both Trump and Daniels under pseudonyms: David Dennison and Peggy Peterson.

David Dennison as Donald Trump

“It is understood and agreed that the true name and identity of the person referred to as ‘DAVID DENNISON’ in the Settlement Agreement is Donald Trump,” the document said, with Trump’s name handwritten.

After the payment was made, Trump’s company reimbursed Cohen and recorded the payments as legal expenses, prosecutors said in charging the former president with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, a charge punishable by up to four years in prison.

While testifying, Davidson also recalled Cohen ranting at Trump in a phone conversation about a month after the 2016 election, complaining that he had been passed over for a position in the new administration and that Trump had yet to reimburse him for Daniels’ pay. . .

She also recalled that Cohen told her that he and Trump were “very upset” when The Wall Street Journal published an article exposing the National Enquirer’s separate $150,000 settlement with McDougal, who said she and Trump had an affair, just days before. of the elections. .

“I wanted to know who the source of the article was, why someone would be the source of this type of article. I was upset at the moment,” Davidson said of Cohen.

“He said his boss was very upset and threatened to sue Karen McDougal.”

Trump has pleaded not guilty and denied any relationship with any of the women, as well as any wrongdoing in the case.

Before the start of testimony, prosecutors sought fines of US$1,000 (NZ$1,700) for each of Trump’s four comments that they said violated a judge’s gag order prohibiting him from attacking witnesses, members of the jury and other people closely related to the case.

That sanction would be in addition to a fine of US$9,000 (NZ$15,000) that Judge Juan M. Merchan imposed in relation to nine separate violations he found.

Merchan did not immediately comment on the request for new sanctions, although he indicated that he was not particularly concerned about one of the four statements pointed out by prosecutors.

The prospect of greater punishment underscores the challenges Trump, the presidential candidate, faces in adapting to the role of a criminal defendant subject to a rigid judicial protocol that he does not control.

It also remained to be seen whether any rebuke from the court would lead Trump to adjust his behavior given the campaign benefit he believed he was gaining by presenting the case as politically motivated.