Skip to main content
Best News Website or Mobile Service
WAN-IFRA Digital Media Awards Worldwide 2022
Best News Website or Mobile Service
Digital Media Awards Worldwide 2022
Hamburger Menu

Advertisement

Advertisement

World

Former fixer Cohen testifies Trump told him to pay hush money

Former fixer Cohen testifies Trump told him to pay hush money

Working for a decade at Trump's side, fixer Michael Cohen was eventually named vice president of The Trump Organization and was given the most delicate tasks his boss needed. (Photo: AFP/File/Yuki IWAMURA, Curtis Means)

NEW YORK: Michael Cohen, Donald Trump's former fixer told jurors on Monday (May 13) that the Republican presidential candidate personally signed off on a hush money payment to a porn star to bury her story about an alleged sexual encounter before it could derail his 2016 campaign.

"Just do it," Cohen said Trump told him, instructing him to figure out the best way of paying adult film actress Stormy Daniels $130,000 to stay quiet about the alleged 2006 encounter.

The payment is at the centre of the first criminal trial of a former US president, which has entered its fifth week in New York state criminal court in Manhattan.

Cohen, once one of Trump's most loyal lieutenants and now the prosecution's star witness, said he learned that Daniels was selling her story at a critical moment for Trump's 2016 White House bid.

At the time, just weeks before Election Day, the campaign was reeling from the release of an audio recording from the TV show "Access Hollywood" in which Trump bragged about grabbing women's genitals.

"WOMEN ARE GOING TO HATE ME"

"He said to me, 'This is a disaster, a total disaster. Women are going to hate me,' Cohen testified. "'Guys, they think it's cool, but this is going to be a disaster for the campaign.'"

Prosecutors have said Trump paid Cohen back after the election and hid the reimbursement by recording it falsely as a legal retainer fee in his real estate company's records.

Daniels and Trump -- under the respective pseudonyms Peggy Peterson and David Dennison -- were party to a nondisclosure agreement prepared by Cohen that has emerged in court filings.

Cohen is critical to the prosecution's case, but his credibility will be put to the test. He spent 13 months in jail and another year and a half under house arrest after pleading guilty in 2018 to lying to Congress and committing financial crimes.

In the first weeks of the trial, the defence painted him as a pathological liar and convicted criminal.

Trump faces 34 counts of falsifying business records tied to the reimbursement. Prosecutors say the altered records covered up election-law and tax-law violations - since the money was essentially an unreported contribution to Trump's campaign - that elevate the crimes from misdemeanours to felonies punishable by up to four years in prison.

Trump, who is running against Democratic President Joe Biden in November has pleaded not guilty and denies having had a sexual encounter with Daniels, who testified last week. He argues the case is a politically motivated attempt to interfere with his campaign to take back the White House.

Trump's defence has suggested the payment to Daniels was meant to protect his family from embarrassment. But Cohen testified that Trump appeared solely concerned with the effect on his campaign.

"He wasn't thinking about Melania. This was all about the campaign," Cohen said, referring to Trump's wife. At the defence table, Trump shook his head.

Cohen said Trump urged him to delay sending payment to Daniels' lawyer until after the election, telling him that the story would no longer matter.

Trump's lawyers have argued that Cohen acted on his own, a notion he rejected on the witness stand.

"YOU'LL GET THE MONEY BACK"

"Everything required Mr. Trump's sign-off," Cohen said. He said he resisted paying out of his own pocket but eventually relented after Trump promised him, "You'll get the money back."

Offering a detailed timeline of the chaotic days during the campaign's final weeks, Cohen described how he set up a shell company - falsely listed as a "real estate consulting company" - to facilitate the payment through a bank across the street from Trump Tower.

Prosecutors showed phone records to jurors indicating that Cohen called Trump's line twice on the morning he visited the bank.

The Manhattan trial is widely seen as less consequential than three other criminal prosecutions Trump faces, all of which are mired in delays.

The other cases charge Trump with trying to overturn his 2020 presidential defeat and mishandling classified documents after leaving office. Trump pleaded not guilty to all three.

Trump, who is on trial while also campaigning to avenge his 2020 loss to President Joe Biden, could still stand in the November election and be sworn in as president if he were to be convicted and even jailed.

Trump's son Eric, who was joined in court by Senator JD Vance, a contender for Trump's vice presidential pick, tweeted he had "never seen anything more rehearsed" than Cohen's testimony.

Source: Agencies/fs

Advertisement

Also worth reading

Advertisement