1 of 5 | Former President Donald Trump sits in the courtroom at Manhattan Criminal Court in New York on Tuesday. Before entering Judge Juan Merchan’s court room and accompanied by House Speaker Mike Johnson, Trump told a crowd of reporters “there’s no crime.” Pool photo by Michael M. Santiago/UPI | License Photo
Donald Trump’s former lawyer and “fixer” Michael Cohen was back on the stand in Manhattan Tuesday to testify to the specifics of his role in Trump’s hush-money trial.
Cohen’s testimony Tuesday largely focused on the invoices Cohen filed to be reimbursed for the hush-money payments he allegedly facilitated to Stormy Daniels to cover up an affair she alleged she had with Trump in order to suppress the story ahead of the 2016 presidential election. Advertisement
The jury saw emails from as far back as 2017 from Trump Organization controller Jeff McConney to Cohen to remind him about a $35,000 payment. Cohen asked McConney to remind him the monthly amount he is supposed to invoice to which he replied and confirmed it was a $35,000 payment.
Prosecutor Susan Hoffinger confirmed that Cohen did not have a legal retainer agreement at the time with Trump and that the invoices had been consistent with directions given by then-Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg, to receive compensation for the payments. Advertisement
Hoffinger asked Cohen if the description in the invoices for legal services rendered had been true, to which he said no. She then asked what the series of payments laid out by the invoices actually were for.
“Reimbursement to me of the hush money fee along with Red Finch and the bonus,” Cohen replied. He then confirmed that the invoice was a false record and that he had received 11 checks totaling $420,000 and that Trump signed all of them from April 2017 onward.
Cohen also detailed a Feb. 2017 White House during which he testified he had a conversation in the Oval Office with Trump, then-president, to which Trump had allegedly asked Cohen if he needed money
“He said I could get a check,” Cohen said of Trump. “I said, ‘No I’m OK.'”
Cohen said Trump directed him to “deal with” Weisselberg and that there would be a check for that month and January the month prior.
Cohen said on stand that he did not get paid in 2018 when “as a result of the Stormy Daniels matter and her electing to go public, Mr. Trump wanted an arbitration action filed against” Daniels’ breach of her nondisclosure agreement. Advertisement
Trump, accompanied by House Speaker Mike Johnson, his son Eric Trump and Republican National Committee Co-Chair Lara Trump, told a crowd of reporters “there’s no crime.”
“I’ve been here for almost four weeks in an icebox, they call it the icebox, listening to a judge who is totally corrupt and conflicted,” the former president said.
He described his payments to Cohen as “a certain amount of money we marked it down as legal expenses.”
“So I had a legal expense and I marked it down as a legal expense,” Trump said. “I didn’t mark it down as a construction of a wall, construction of a building, I didn’t mark it down as electricity.”
Trump also said that “signing a NDA is not a crime.”
Trump was charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up the alleged affairs with Daniels and McDougal.
He pleaded not guilty to the charges and has denied the affairs.
A New York appeals court on Tuesday also denied an attempt by Trump’s legal team to overturn the gag order against him.
“We find that Justice Merchan properly weighed petitioner’s First Amendment Rights against the court’s historical commitment to ensuring the fair administration of justice in criminal cases and the right of persons related or tangentially related to the criminal proceedings from being free from threats, intimidation, harassment and harm,” the court ruled. Advertisement
On Monday, Cohen testified that he had arranged paying $125,000 for Playboy model Karen McDougal’s life rights to a story about her affair with Trump at the former president’s direction.
He said he arranged to buy the rights to the story under direction from Trump, adding he did not personally have any intent or reason to own McDougal’s life rights.
Cohen had admitted to misleading the bank about the purpose of the LLC, saying he did not believe the bank would open it if it knew its true purpose.
