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Transcript of Trump Manhattan Trial, May 6, 2024
Transcript of Trump Manhattan Trial, May 6, 2024 – The New York Times
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Clifford, Stephanie (1979- )
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Stormy Daniels Testifies at Trump’s Hush-Money Trial
For three weeks, witness after witness in Donald J. Trump’s criminal trial has spoken the name of Stormy Daniels, the porn star whose claim of a sexual encounter with the former president is at the center of the case. Today, jurors will hear from her.Ms. Daniels was called by prosecutors to take the witness stand in the Manhattan courtroom on Tuesday to testify against Mr. Trump. It will be her first time relaying her account while in the same room as Mr. Trump since her story of the encounter and a subsequent $130,000 payment to buy her silence became public six years ago.Much about that hush-money payment just before the 2016 election has been laid out in court from people who had key roles in the payment, as well as those on the periphery. They have described the mad scramble by Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former fixer, to buy her silence before the election and Mr. Trump’s reimbursement of him while in the White House. Now, Ms. Daniels gets to tell her side of the story.Ms. Daniels, 45, was born Stephanie Clifford and raised in Baton Rouge, La. She said her encounter with Mr. Trump happened in July 2006, after be came a televisision star with his reality show, “The Apprentice.”They met at the booth for a porn label, Wicked Pictures, at a golf tournament in Nevada, and there is a picture of them together there. Afterward, she said, he invited her to his hotel suite, and they had sex. He also invited her to appear on “The Apprentice,” she said, but she never did.Ms. Daniels has said they kept in contact over the following years. Mr. Trump even had a nickname for her, she said: “Honeybunch.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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Transcript of Trump Manhattan Trial, May 2, 2024
Transcript of Trump Manhattan Trial, May 2, 2024 – The New York Times
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Prosecutors Ask Judge to Hold Trump in Contempt for a Second Time
Two days after former President Donald J. Trump was held in contempt and fined for violating the gag order placed on him in his criminal trial in Manhattan, the judge overseeing the case conducted a hearing to determine if Mr. Trump had broken the rules again.Justice Juan M. Merchan did not reach a decision on the question during the 40-minute proceeding that took place on Thursday in Manhattan Criminal Court, where Mr. Trump is being tried on charges of falsifying business records to cover up a hush-money payment to a porn star on the eve of the 2016 election.But during the hearing — the second in the past two weeks concerning violations of the gag order — Justice Merchan heard arguments from prosecutors and Mr. Trump’s lawyers about whether the former president should be sanctioned again for ignoring the protective measure four more times. The allegations stem from Mr. Trump’s recent remarks in interviews and news conferences, including one that took place outside the same courtroom where his trial is being held.On Tuesday, Justice Merchan fined Mr. Trump $9,000 for nine earlier violations. In that ruling, the judge bemoaned the fact that he lacked the authority to issue steeper fines and warned the former president that continued disobedience could land him in jail.The two contempt hearings were the latest reminder of the extraordinary measures that judges have taken to keep Mr. Trump from lashing out at participants in the wide array of legal matters in which he is embroiled.Christopher Conroy, a prosecutor, opened Thursday’s hearing by asking Justice Merchan to fine Mr. Trump $1,000 for each of the four new violations of the gag order that he said took place in recent days as the jury heard evidence.Mr. Conroy reminded the judge that he had imposed the gag order to begin with “because of the defendant’s persistent and escalating rhetoric,” adding that Mr. Trump’s “statements are corrosive to this proceeding and the fair administration of justice.”Mr. Conroy went on to say that Mr. Trump had violated the gag order not only repeatedly, but also willfully.“The defendant thinks the rules should be different for him,” he said.Todd Blanche, a lawyer for Mr. Trump, reprised arguments he made last week. He sought to persuade Justice Merchan that his client’s statements had been made merely in response to political attacks from others — including President Biden.Referring to the rows of reporters behind him in the courtroom, Mr. Blanche said that in a case that has attracted such immense publicity, it was unfair that Mr. Trump was constrained from reacting to verbal assaults.While Justice Merchan seemed open to the idea that Mr. Trump should not be defenseless against attacks from enemies or rivals, he pointed out that the gag order did not bar him from saying whatever he wished about Mr. Biden.The judge also noted that no one has forced Mr. Trump to speak daily to reporters who gather in a courtroom hallway at every break in the proceeding.“The former president of the United States is on trial, and he’s the leading candidate of the Republican Party,” Justice Merchan said. “It’s not surprising we have press in the courtroom.”The first incident the judge was asked to consider took place on April 22 as testimony began. Mr. Trump went after one of the state’s main witnesses, Michael D. Cohen, describing him as a liar to reporters outside the courtroom. Mr. Cohen, who was once a lawyer and fixer for Mr. Trump, is expected to take the stand in the coming weeks and describe how he paid $130,000 to the porn star, Stormy Daniels, on his boss’s behalf to keep her from going public with her story of a sexual encounter with him.Later that same day, Mr. Trump made disparaging remarks about jurors during a telephone interview with a right-wing media outlet, Real America’s Voice. The jury, he said, was “mostly all Democrat,” adding, “It’s a very unfair situation.”The next morning — just before he was scheduled to appear in court for a hearing on his previous violations of the gag order — Mr. Trump attacked Mr. Cohen again during a television interview with an ABC affiliate in Pennsylvania.“Michael Cohen is a convicted liar,” Mr. Trump said, “and he’s got no credibility whatsoever.”Another incident took place on April 25 when Mr. Trump, appearing at a news conference in midtown Manhattan, made a comment to reporters about David Pecker, the former publisher of The National Enquirer. Later that morning, Mr. Pecker would continue his testimony about deals he had reached with the former president to “catch and kill” negative stories about him.“He’s been very nice,” Mr. Trump said. “I mean, he’s been — David’s been very nice. A nice guy.” More
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Transcript of Trump Manhattan Trial, April 30, 2024
G. Farro
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Cross/Blanche
Page 1631
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there helping you make things happen?
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A
I have several team members, yes.
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And, again, if we can put up Exhibit, already in
evidence, 371, if we can go to the second page first, and then
the next page.
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This is, again, the various documentation associated
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with the LLC that ultimately was founded, correct?
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A
That’s correct.
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And on page two, there are some questions about
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A
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A
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whether, I believe, standard questions about whether he is
acting as an agent for anybody.
And Mr. Cohen answered, no, to that, right?
That’s correct.
And if he had answered, yes, that would have
potentially raised more questions?
A Well, not only would it raise more questions, it would
require more paperwork.
What type of paperwork?
We would have to know. We would have to determine
exactly who he was acting as agent for.
And by, know, just have him tell you, or would there
have to be
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A
No.
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—
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A
– proof, documentation?
Documentation.
Susan Pearce-Bates, RPR, CCR, RSA
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Day 4 of Trump’s Criminal Hush-Money Trial: Key Takeaways
The first week of the criminal trial of Donald J. Trump ended with a disturbing jolt: a 37-year-old man set himself on fire outside the courthouse, an event that overshadowed the legal proceedings inside.The news of the immolation rippled through the press corps just as the final members of Mr. Trump’s jury — including 12 seated jurors and six alternates — were being sworn in. Reporters rushed from the Lower Manhattan courtroom.But the trial’s pace, which has been faster than expected, did not slack. After lunch, Justice Juan M. Merchan conducted a hearing to determine which questions prosecutors might ask Mr. Trump if he were to testify in his own defense.Mr. Trump, 77, is charged with falsifying 34 business records in an attempt to cover up a payment to Stormy Daniels, an adult film actress who has said they had a sexual encounter in 2006. Prosecutors have said he did so to better his chances of winning the election. He has denied the charges; the former president could face probation or prison if convicted.Opening statements in the case are expected Monday.Here are five takeaways from Mr. Trump’s fourth day, and the first week, on trial:We have our jury. And many are probably familiar with the Lexington Avenue subway.The process was grueling at times, but we have a panel of 12 Manhattanites who comprise the jury, and six alternates, who will hear the evidence and may be called upon to step in if jurors are excused or disqualified.It is a diverse bunch, both in their neighborhoods and professions: a Harlem educator, a Chelsea tech worker, a product manager from Upper Manhattan. The alternates who were added Friday included a fashion worker from Chinatown, an information technology specialist from Inwood and an unemployed woman from Murray Hill.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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‘Access Hollywood’ Tape Can Be Discussed at Trump Hush-Money Trial, Judge Rules
Jurors in Donald J. Trump’s hush-money case will hear testimony about the “Access Hollywood” recording in which he boasts about groping women. They will not hear his voice.A New York judge on Monday ruled that prosecutors can introduce a variety of damaging evidence in Donald J. Trump’s coming criminal trial, including references to the infamous “Access Hollywood” recording in which Mr. Trump boasts about groping women.Mr. Trump’s lawyers had sought to keep the tape out of evidence, and the judge, Juan M. Merchan, struck something of a compromise. He ruled that it was unnecessary for prosecutors from the Manhattan district attorney’s office to actually play the tape for a jury, but that they could question witnesses about it.In other rulings on Monday, the judge strengthened the prosecution’s hand heading into the trial, which is tentatively set to start in mid-April. Jury selection was originally scheduled to have begun March 25, but the judge last week delayed the trial at least three weeks after more than 100,000 investigative records came to light.Unless the judge delays it again, it almost certainly will be the first of Mr. Trump’s four criminal cases to be heard by jurors, and will be the first prosecution of a former American president in the nation’s history.Some of the evidence prosecutors want to introduce does not directly relate to the core accusation in the case — that Mr. Trump covered up a potential sex scandal involving the porn star Stormy Daniels to clear his path to the presidency in 2016. But it strikes at the heart of Mr. Trump’s potential motive for approving a hush-money payment to Ms. Daniels. He did that on the heels of the “Access Hollywood” recording being made public, a development that upended Mr. Trump’s campaign in the weeks before Election Day.The judge withheld a decision about some of the most damaging pieces of evidence that prosecutors want to introduce: three public accusations of sexual assault lodged against Mr. Trump after the tape was released. Persuading the judge that allegations of sexual assault should be allowed could be difficult, given that judges are supposed to carefully evaluate evidence that could unfairly harm a defendant in the eyes of the jury.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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Trump’s Allies Pledged Loyalty to Him. Until They Didn’t.
The former president is facing down Michael Cohen, his longtime fixer, in a Manhattan courtroom, while other ex-loyalists are cooperating in a case against him in Georgia.Donald J. Trump could not hide his anger. Sitting at the front of a crowded New York courtroom this week, he folded his arms tightly across his chest. He tossed his head and scowled. He stared into the middle distance and scrolled through his phone.His ire was directed at Michael D. Cohen, his former personal lawyer and fixer, who had taken the witness stand 15 feet away and had promptly called Mr. Trump a liar. Mr. Cohen has told his share of lies as well. But in court, he swore he had done so “at the direction of, in concert with and for the benefit of Mr. Trump.”Mr. Cohen’s two days of dramatic testimony this week provided the first glimpse of what could become a familiar scene: Mr. Trump, sitting at a defense table, watching as a lawyer who once did his bidding now cooperated with the authorities seeking to hold him to account.On the same day Mr. Cohen began his testimony, Jenna Ellis, who had sought to help Mr. Trump overturn the results of the 2020 election, pleaded guilty to state charges in Georgia. She was preceded by Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro, both lawyers who worked with Mr. Trump’s campaign, both now expected to cooperate in the criminal case that the Georgia prosecutors brought against him.The circumstances surrounding the Georgia criminal case and the Manhattan civil fraud trial are vastly different. But near the center of each case are lawyers who pledged public fealty to Mr. Trump — until they very publicly did not.Mr. Trump has long relied on a phalanx of legal attack dogs to speak on his behalf, or to do or say things he would rather not do or say himself. And because Mr. Trump has such a tenuous relationship with the truth, those lieutenants often spread a message that prosecutors and investigators consider to be outright lies. Lies about an election he lost, a relationship with a porn star he may have had and a net worth he may not quite have achieved.Now those statements are ricocheting back at Mr. Trump as he contends with the civil trial in New York, brought by the state’s attorney general, Letitia James, and with four criminal indictments up and down the East Coast. And while Mr. Trump is quick to blame his betrayers — Mr. Cohen is “proven to be a liar,” he said outside the courtroom this week — his predicament was born from his own lopsided approach to relationships.Mr. Trump has a history of disavowing people who were once close to him and find themselves in trouble. He had long since cut ties with Mr. Cohen — until Tuesday, they had not seen each other in five years — and more recently he distanced himself from the lawyers in the Georgia case. He had also refused to pay their mounting legal bills.Their relationships, a one-way street flowing in Mr. Trump’s direction, appeared to work for a time. But when those loyal soldiers faced their own legal jeopardy, their allegiance to the former president became strained or even shattered.There have been exceptions since Mr. Trump’s split with Mr. Cohen. Mr. Trump’s political action committee has picked up the legal bills for his co-defendants in the federal criminal case involving his handling of classified government documents, as well as those of several witnesses connected to the case.Mr. Trump’s company also agreed to dole out a $2 million severance payment to his longtime chief financial officer, Allen H. Weisselberg, and continues to pay for Mr. Weisselberg’s lawyers. Mr. Weisselberg pleaded guilty to tax fraud and testified at the company’s criminal trial last year, but has stopped short of turning on Mr. Trump.Mr. Cohen was among several in a series of people who Mr. Trump turned to over decades in the hopes they would emulate his first fixer and defender, the lawyer Roy Cohn. “Roy was brutal, but he was a very loyal guy,” Mr. Trump told one of his biographers, Timothy O’Brien, in an interview. “He brutalized for you.”That brutality — along with Mr. Cohn’s method of conflating public relations defenses with legal ones, making showy displays in court and accusing the federal government of “Gestapo-like tactics” against Mr. Trump in a 1970s suit alleging housing discrimination — became Mr. Trump’s preferred model for a lawyer.Mr. Cohen has often said that those sort of tactics influenced what Mr. Trump looks for in those who defend him.While it is unclear how useful Ms. Ellis and the other two lawyers will be to the case against Mr. Trump in Georgia, Mr. Cohen has already been tormenting Mr. Trump for the last five years. Ms. Ellis became critical of him publicly in the last several months.Mr. Trump made a point of attending the trial in Manhattan this week to watch Mr. Cohen’s testimony in person.Dave Sanders for The New York TimesFor Mr. Trump, the feud with Mr. Cohen is personal. Although he is running for president and fighting the four indictments, none of those obligations could pry him away from the Manhattan courtroom to watch Mr. Cohen’s testimony. Mr. Trump did not have to attend the testimony, but people close to him say he believes events go better for him when he is present.Mr. Trump’s falling out with Mr. Cohen stemmed from their dealings with the porn star Stormy Daniels.In the final stretch of the 2016 presidential campaign, Mr. Cohen paid Ms. Daniels $130,000 to silence her story of an affair with Mr. Trump years earlier — an affair that Mr. Trump denied had ever taken place.The deal came to light in 2018, and soon, the F.B.I. had searched Mr. Cohen’s home and office. As Mr. Cohen’s life imploded, Mr. Trump began to distance himself from his fixer, and eventually, his company stopped paying Mr. Cohen’s legal bills altogether.Mr. Cohen soon lashed out and began to speak with prosecutors. When he pleaded guilty that year for his role in the hush-money deal, he stood up in court and pointed the finger at the then-president. Mr. Trump, Mr. Cohen declared, had directed the payment of the hush money.Although the federal prosecutors declined to indict Mr. Trump, this year the Manhattan district attorney’s office brought charges against him related to the deal, using Mr. Cohen as a potential star witness for a trial scheduled to start in the spring. Mr. Cohen has also testified before Congress that the former president’s company had manipulated financial statements to reach Mr. Trump’s desired net worth. That testimony was the catalyst for Ms. James to open her investigation.When Ms. James’s team questioned Mr. Cohen on Tuesday, he repeated many of the same accusations, testifying that Mr. Trump had directed him to “reverse engineer” annual financial statements to reach the former president’s desired net worth.Mr. Cohen spoke calmly and confidently as he recounted Mr. Trump’s obsession with his net worth.But the Trump team’s cross-examination exposed the perils of relying on a disgruntled former aide, especially one as temperamental as Mr. Cohen.Mr. Trump’s lawyers seized on Mr. Cohen’s inconsistent statements about the former president and his own crimes, leading him to admit to having lied a number of times. Toward the end of the second day of cross-examination, Mr. Cohen appeared visibly flustered as he tripped over rapid-fire questions about whether Mr. Trump had personally directed him to inflate numbers on his annual financial statements. Mr. Cohen said he had not, prompting Mr. Trump and one of his lawyers, Alina Habba, to throw their hands up in victory.Ms. Habba also resurfaced a series of glowing remarks Mr. Cohen once made about his boss, further underscoring his about-face.“I think he’s going to be an amazing president”; “I’m the guy who would take the bullet for the president”; “I think the world of him, I respect him as a business man and I respect him as a boss,” Ms. Habba emphatically read, as she circled the courtroom with a hand-held microphone like a preacher delivering a sermon.This appeared to delight Mr. Trump, who turned to watch Ms. Habba while draping his arm over her empty chair.Before Mr. Cohen completed his testimony on Wednesday, one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers asked Justice Arthur J. Engoron to dismiss the case, citing Mr. Cohen’s contradictions.Justice Engoron denied the request, and Mr. Trump stormed out of the courtroom.Kate Christobek More
