On the docket: Michael Cohen closely ties Trump to Stormy Daniels payoff and repayment
The witness that could make or break Donald Trump’s hush-money criminal trial took the witness stand on Monday – and did not disappoint.
Michael Cohen, the former attorney and fixer for the ex-president, testified that his old boss had directly instructed him to pay off adult film star Stormy Daniels to buy her silence. Cohen then walked the jury through how Trump paid him back, directly addressing the crux of the criminal charges against Trump.
Cohen testified that when Daniels’ attorney approached him in early October 2016, less than a month before the presidential election, about a deal to keep Daniels quiet, Trump told him to “just take care of it.”
He and Trump tried to avoid paying until after the election, but Cohen finally sent Daniels’ attorney $130,000 just days before the election, when Daniels threatened to go public with the story. Cohen testified that he would never have made that payment without Trump’s explicit approval, “because everything required Mr Trump’s sign-off and on top of that, I wanted the money back”.
Cohen also went into specific detail about how he was finally paid back by Trump, with a little extra thrown in to make him happy.
He testified he blew his top when he got his annual bonus in late December 2016, after Trump had won election, because it was two-thirds less than what it had been the previous year. He let Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg know, with some “colorful language”, just how “truly pissed off and angry” he was. Trump called Cohen a few days later, and Cohen testified the then president-elect told him not to worry and that everything would get taken care of.
Cohen said that at a subsequent meeting shortly before Trump left for Washington DC for the inauguration, Weisselberg took the $130,000 Trump owed Cohen for the hush-money payment and added $50,000 Cohen said he’d paid to cover another expense for Trump, then doubled it to cover the taxes Cohen would have to pay on the amount and added $60,000 as an additional bonus to make Cohen happy. That’s $420,000 total, for those keeping score at home.
Cohen said that he and Weisselberg then went into Trump’s office so Weisselberg could tell Trump what Cohen would be paid, and Trump approved it before saying “this is going to be one heck of a ride in DC”.
Cohen said he turned down the role of assistant general counsel in the White House, and said he wanted to be personal counsel to the president instead. When asked what expectations he had to be paid for that role, he said “none at all”, explaining that he planned to monetize the title by getting other companies to pay him as a consultant.
Cohen also testified that Trump’s concern about the Daniels and McDougal stories getting out was all about the impact on the 2016 election, not about how his wife Melania would react.
Trump’s team has sought to make it look like he wanted to keep these stories out of the news because he wanted to keep them from his wife, not as part of an alleged scheme to unlawfully influence the election – the underlying criminal act that makes the charges against Trump felonies. But Cohen testified that Trump told him to delay the payments to Daniels “past the election, ‘because if I win, I’ll be president, and if I lose, I won’t really care’”.
“He wasn’t thinking about Melania,” Cohen said. “It was all about the campaign.”
In other news
In a minor setback for prosecutors, Judge Juan Merchan said Monday morning that he would not allow prosecutors to enter Weisselberg’s severance agreement from the Trump Organization into evidence. Prosecutors said last week that Trump’s company agreed to give Weisselberg $750,000 in severance – but only if he doesn’t “cooperate” with investigators. He pleaded guilty to perjury in a separate Trump case and is currently serving a five-month jail sentence.
What’s next
Cohen will return to the witness stand on Tuesday to finish answering questions from prosecutors. Trump’s attorneys will then get their crack at him.
