Cohen, Michael D (1966- )

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      Custodial Witnesses Affirm Basic Facts in Trump’s Hush-Money Trial

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      They have provided some of the more quotidian testimony in a trial populated by porn stars and presidents: a series of witnesses who have discussed such matters as FedEx labels, Sharpie usage and stapling protocol.But each of those witnesses has provided a link in the chain of custody of the 34 business documents at the heart of the case against Donald J. Trump, whose trial is completing its fourth week on Friday.Mr. Trump is accused of disguising those records as payments for legal services to cover up a reimbursement to Michael Cohen, his former lawyer and fixer. Mr. Cohen in 2016 had paid $130,000 to Stormy Daniels, an adult film actress, to bury her allegation of a sexual encounter with the former president.Such witnesses, known as custodial witnesses, are used to authenticate documents and events that have not otherwise previously been agreed to — stipulated, in legalese — by prosecutors and defense lawyers.Witnesses this week have included Madeleine Westerhout, a former executive assistant to Mr. Trump during his time in the White House. Ms. Westerhout, who spoke affectionately of Mr. Trump and broke into tears on the stand on Thursday speaking about her 2019 firing, testified about having received checks for Mr. Trump to sign, which he sometimes did in the Oval Office.Jeffrey S. McConney, the Trump Organization’s former corporate controller, also described in painstaking detail how Mr. Cohen requested the checks by invoice. They were then cut by Deborah Tarasoff, an accounts supervisor at the organization, and sent via FedEx to the White House by Rebecca Manochio, a junior bookkeeper at the company.Those checks left Mr. Trump’s headquarters in New York stapled to Mr. Cohen’s invoices and arrived in Washington, making their way to the White House through two of Mr. Trump’s aides, including Keith Schiller, Mr. Trump’s personal bodyguard, at their home addresses.A defense attorney, Susan Necheles, sought to downplay the sending of checks to an outside address, suggesting in questioning Ms. Westerhout that such an arrangement was simply “a workaround” to avoid things getting delayed in a crush of mail being received at the White House. Ms. Westerhout agreed.Once the checks were signed by Mr. Trump — often in Sharpie, according to testimony — they were sent back to New York, and eventually to Mr. Cohen, who is expected to be a key witness for prosecutors, beginning on Monday. More

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      Stormy Daniels Testifies at Trump’s Hush-Money Trial

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      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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      Prosecutors Ask Judge to Hold Trump in Contempt for a Second Time

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      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

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      G. Farro
      –
      Cross/Blanche
      Page 1631
      1
      there helping you make things happen?
      2
      A
      I have several team members, yes.
      3
      4
      5
      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.
      6
      This is, again, the various documentation associated
      7
      with the LLC that ultimately was founded, correct?
      8
      A
      That’s correct.
      9
      And on page two, there are some questions about
      10
      11
      12
      13
      A
      14
      15
      16
      17
      18
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      A
      20
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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
      23
      A
      No.
      24
      —
      25
      A
      – proof, documentation?
      Documentation.
      Susan Pearce-Bates, RPR, CCR, RSA
      Principal Court Reporter More

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      Trump’s Trial Could Bring a Rarity: Consequences for His Words

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      The former president has spent decades spewing thousands and thousands of words, sometimes contradicting himself. That tendency is now working against him in his Manhattan criminal case.“So that’s not true? That’s not true?”The judge in control of Donald J. Trump’s Manhattan criminal trial had just cut off the former president’s lawyer, Todd Blanche. Mr. Blanche had been in the midst of defending a social media post in which his client wrote that a statement that had been public for years “WAS JUST FOUND!”Mr. Blanche had already acknowledged during the Tuesday hearing that Mr. Trump’s post was false. But the judge, Juan M. Merchan, wasn’t satisfied.“I need to understand,” Justice Merchan said, glaring down at the lawyer from the bench, “what I am dealing with.”The question of what is true — or at least what can be proven — is at the heart of any trial. But this particular defendant, accused by the Manhattan district attorney’s office of falsifying business records to conceal a sex scandal, has spent five decades spewing thousands and thousands of words, sometimes contradicting himself within minutes, sometimes within the same breath, with little concern for the consequences of what he said.Mr. Trump has treated his own words as disposable commodities, intended for single use, and not necessarily indicative of any deeply held beliefs. And his tendency to pile phrases on top of one another has often worked to his benefit, amusing or engaging his supporters — sometimes spurring threats and even violence — while distracting, enraging or just plain disorienting his critics and adversaries.If Mr. Blanche seemed unconcerned at the hearing that he was telling a criminal judge that his client had said something false, it may have been simply because the routine has become so familiar.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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      Prosecutors Say Trump Keeps Breaking Gag Order, With Four New Violations

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      Prosecutors on Thursday accused former President Donald J. Trump of violating a gag order four additional times, saying that he continues to defy the judge’s directions not to attack witnesses, prosecutors and jurors in his hush-money trial.“He’s doing what the order tells him not to do,” said Christopher Conroy, a prosecutor for the Manhattan district attorney.As Mr. Conroy laid out what he said were violations, Mr. Trump whispered to his lawyer Todd Blanche and frowned. After they spoke, Mr. Blanche rubbed his face several times.With the latest allegations, prosecutors now say that Mr. Trump has violated the gag order 15 times in less than two weeks. The judge in the case, Juan M. Merchan, is expected to rule soon on earlier violations and could hold the former president in contempt or issue a fine. The new instances include two separate attacks on his former personal lawyer and fixer, Michael D. Cohen, once during a recent television interview and another while speaking to reporters in the hallway outside the Lower Manhattan courtroom. Another violation, prosecutors said, stemmed from a recent interview in which Mr. Trump referred to the jury as “95 percent Democrats.”The fourth example, prosecutors said, took place before the trial began on Thursday, at a campaign stop with construction workers in Manhattan. There, Mr. Trump called David Pecker, the former National Enquirer publisher who took the witness stand for a third time on Thursday, “a nice guy.”Prosecutors accused Mr. Trump of sending a message to Mr. Pecker and other witnesses to be “nice,” or get attacked. They said they would submit the additional violations to the court.Justice Merchan imposed the gag order on Mr. Trump in late March, barring him from making public statements about any witnesses, prosecutors, jurors or court staff, as well as their families. But within a week, Mr. Trump found a loophole in the order and repeatedly attacked the judge’s daughter, a Democratic political consultant.In a hearing earlier this week on the 10 previous violations, lawyers for Mr. Trump argued that the former president had been exercising his right to respond to attacks. Prosecutors noted that the gag order did not include exceptions for Mr. Trump to respond to those who criticize him. More