The criminal trial of former President Donald Trump resumed in a Manhattan courtroom Tuesday with testimony from a key witness who described in detail how the hush money transactions at the center of the trial came together.
Prosecutors called on Keith Davidson, the lawyer who represented both Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels, two women who said they had sexual encounters with Trump and were paid to keep quiet about their allegations during the 2016 presidential election. Trump has denied both women's claims.
Trump sat stone-faced as Davidson began recounting his work for Daniels, an adult film star. He recounted an incident from 2011 when a website posted a blog item about Daniels saying she and Trump had had a “physical or romantic interaction” in 2006. At the request of Daniels' talent manager Gina Rodriguez, Davidson sent the site a cease and desist letter. Around the same time, Rodriguez got a call from "some jerk," who turned out to be Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen, who was "very aggressive" and threatened to sue Daniels over the item.
Davidson called Cohen and said he was "met with a hostile barrage of insults." Davidson told him his client had nothing to do with the story and had tried to get it taken down. It eventually was removed from the site.
The story came back to life in 2016, after Rodriguez started shopping it around as Trump's odds of becoming the Republican presidential nominee increased. There was little interest in her story until the so-called Access Hollywood tape became public that October. The 2005 hot mic recording had Trump saying he could grope women without their consent because "when you're a star, they let you do it."
The story was "troublesome" for Trump, and had "a tremendous influence" on the value of Daniels' claims, Davidson said. Rodriguez went back to Howard to negotiate a $120,000 deal but then backed out, and offered to have Rodriguez negotiate directly with Cohen. She refused, and Davidson said Howard and Rodriguez convinced him to get involved with the talks on Daniels' behalf.
The eventual settlement included aliases for Daniels and Trump. She was "Peggy Peterson" and Trump was "David Dennison," the name of a player on Davidson's high school hockey team, he said. Dennison is "very upset" about the use of his name in the deal, Davidson joked.
The agreement had a funding deadline of Oct. 14, but Cohen kept offering up excuses for why he wasn't able to pay yet, including saying the Secret Service had set up "firewalls." By the 17th, Davidson said he'd had enough, and told him that he and Daniels were walking away from the deal. “I thought he was trying to kick the can down the road until after the election,” the lawyer said.
Howard persuaded Davidson to re-engage, and Cohen finally wired him the money on Oct. 26. When Cohen first told him the money had been paid, Davidson said, "I told him that I didn't believe him."
Davidson also testified about the hush money deal involving McDougal, a former Playboy model.
The prosecution showed in previously private text messages how McDougal had her story about allegedly having an affair with Trump bought by the National Enquirer — a key piece of the catch-and-kill accusations facing the former president.
Davidson said he was put in touch with McDougal by her former brother-in-law, who was a client of his. After agreeing to represent her, he reached out to Dylan Howard, who was the editor-in-chief of the National Enquirer. "I have a blockbuster Trump story," he said in a June 2016 text message that was displayed to the jury.
"Did he cheat on Melania?" Howard asked in one of the texts back. "I really can't say yet, sorry," Howard replied. Howard personally met with Davidson and McDougal days later, and initially said he wasn't interested in her story because she didn't have any documentary evidence. Davidson said that stance soon changed.
Davidson did not elaborate on the reason but Howard's boss, David Pecker, testified earlier in the trial that Howard had believed McDougal's claims. Pecker said he came to believe them also because Trump reached out to him and told him McDougal was "a nice girl."
They eventually settled on a $150,000 deal — 45% of which went to Davidson. Under the terms of the agreement, McDougal sold her rights to a story about an unidentified married man and was told she'd be able to write columns for Enquirer publisher AMI's fitness magazines in an effort to make her into a "brand," Davidson said.
Davidson said that, after the deal was completed, he called Cohen to let him know. "He was pleased," Davidson said. Asked by prosecutor Joshua Steinglass if the agreement would benefit Trump, Davidson replied, "Yes."
Trump, who sat with his eyes closed sporadically through the morning, appeared to be sleeping at times as Davidson began his testimony, sometimes appearing to stir before closing his eyes again.
Davidson will resume his testimony Thursday when court is back in session.
Before bringing in the jury, Judge Juan Merchan found Trump in criminal contempt for having repeatedly violated his gag order. He said he’d found Trump violated the order nine times, and fined him $9,000. Prosecutors had argued that he’d done so 10 times.
The amount of $1,000 per post is the maximum the judge can hand down. He noted in his ruling the amount likely doesn’t mean much to Trump, but said he is not able to increase the amount. “Because this Court is not cloaked with such discretion, it must therefore consider whether in some instances, jail may be a necessary punishment” going forward, the judge wrote.
“Defendant is hereby warned that the Court will not tolerate continued willful violations of its lawful orders and that if necessary and appropriate under the circumstances, it will impose an incarceratory punishment,” he wrote.
Trump decried the ruling in a post on his social media platform while court was still in session, saying the "judge has taken away my Constitutional Right to free speech."
The judge also granted Trump's request to be excused from the trial on May 17 for his son Barron's high school graduation. Trump had repeatedly falsely claimed since the trial began that the judge had rejected that request.
Another of Trump's sons, Eric Trump, was in court with him on Tuesday, marking the first time a Trump family member has shown up in court since the trial began over two weeks ago. Also attending the day's proceedings were Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Trump ally, and Carter Page, the former Trump campaign aide who became enmeshed in special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
The first witness of the day was Gary Farro, a banker who worked with then-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen when Cohen, Trump's self-described "fixer," paid adult film star Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet during the 2016 presidential campaign about her allegation that she had a sexual encounter with Trump a decade earlier.
Farro, who in 2016 was an executive at First Republic Bank, testified Friday that Cohen reached out to him in mid-October of that year to set up a bank account for a company he was forming called Essential Consultants LLC.
Cohen described the company to the bank "as a real estate consulting company to collect fees for investment consulting work he does for real estate deals," Farro told jurors. Prosecutors characterized it as a shell company that was set up to mask the source of the payment, which was made shortly before Election Day.
Farro testified Tuesday the bank would have asked more questions had it known where the money was actually going. "It is an industry we do not work with," he said, referring to adult films.
Cohen funded the account by transferring $131,000 from his home equity line of credit account, Farro said. The money was then sent via wire transfer to Davidson.
Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records related to reimbursing Cohen for the Daniels payment. He has pleaded not guilty.
After Farro wrapped up, prosecutors called to the stand Robert Browning, the director of C-SPAN's archives. Browning authenticated videos of then-candidate Trump that the network aired during the 2016 election, which prosecutors played for the jury, as well as one from Jan. 2017, when Trump was president-elect. In the 2017 clip, Trump called Cohen "a very talented lawyer."
The Manhattan district attorney's office has been keeping its list of witnesses close to the vest, citing Trump's social media posts blasting expected witnesses Cohen and Daniels.
Also Tuesday, a state appeals court formally denied Trump's request to stay the trial while he argues that Merchan should have recused himself.
