New York State Criminal Case Against Trump (71543-23)

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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 Tells of Her Encounter With Trump in Tahoe

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      Stormy Daniels on Tuesday told jurors her account of a sexual encounter with Donald J. Trump in 2006, an episode that ultimately resulted in the former president’s criminal trial.Despite the objections of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, Justice Juan M. Merchan ruled that it would be up to jurors to decide on the credibility of the porn actress, whose $130,000 hush-money agreement with Mr. Trump before the 2016 election is at the heart of the charges against him. Prosecutors said she would not, however, describe his genitalia, as she did in her book “Full Disclosure.”Mr. Trump denies they ever had sex.The fateful meeting of Mr. Trump and Ms. Daniels nearly 18 years ago took place at a celebrity golf tournament on the banks of Lake Tahoe in Nevada. Mr. Trump was competing there, and Ms. Daniels was working at the event to promote a porn studio, Wicked Pictures.This account is drawn from versions of her story that Ms. Daniels has told in the past. She first described her interactions with Mr. Trump in a 2011 magazine interview. The magazine, Life & Style, agreed to pay her $15,000 for her story, but she never collected because Mr. Trump’s then fixer, Michael D. Cohen — who is now expected to be one of the prosecution’s primary witnesses — had the story killed before publication.The interview was eventually published in a related publication, In Touch Weekly, in early 2018 after The Wall Street Journal revealed her hush-money deal. She described the episode again in her book, which was published later that year.Ms. Daniels has said that at the tournament she rode with Mr. Trump in a golf court while he was playing, and he later asked for her phone number and invited her to dinner.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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      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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      Jeffrey McConney, Trump Trial Witness, Helped Reimburse Michael Cohen

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      Jeffrey S. McConney worked as the corporate controller at the Trump Organization and, prosecutors say, helped arrange the reimbursement for a $130,000 hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels, who has long claimed to have had an affair with Donald J. Trump.That reimbursement is at the center of the criminal case against Mr. Trump. Prosecutors in the Manhattan district attorney’s office have accused Mr. Trump of falsifying business records by mislabeling the reimbursements in 2017 to Michael D. Cohen, his former personal lawyer and fixer, as “legal expenses.” Mr. Cohen made the payment to Ms. Daniels in the last days of the 2016 campaign.Mr. McConney, who took the witness stand on Monday, testified that he had a close relationship with his boss, Allen H. Weisselberg, then the company’s chief financial officer, who told him in 2017 that Mr. Cohen was owed money.He said that Mr. Weisselberg instructed him to send the money to Essential Consultants, the company Mr. Cohen had set up for the $130,000 hush-money payment to Ms. Daniels. The checks that Mr. Cohen received throughout 2017 exceeded that amount because he was also paid a bonus and money to cover the taxes on the income.Mr. McConney also spoke about Mr. Trump’s constant focus on the outflow of cash at the Trump Organization. Mr. McConney joined the company in 1987 and about a year later, Mr. Trump noticed that its cash balances had decreased from the week before. He called Mr. McConney and said, “Jeff, you’re fired.”He was not actually fired, Mr. McConney said on Monday, but the incident served as a lesson about Mr. Trump’s attention to cash and bills.Mr. McConney got involved the following February, according to a statement of facts filed by prosecutors that identified him only as the “TO Controller,” using the abbreviation for Mr. Trump’s company. That month, prosecutors say, Mr. Cohen emailed an invoice to Mr. McConney for $35,000 worth of legal expenses in January 2017 and the same for February 2017.Prosecutors say that Mr. Weisselberg approved the payments, and then Mr. McConney asked another accounting division employee to issue them and to register them as “legal expenses.” The payments continued through 2017.Mr. McConney testified for several days last November in a civil fraud case against Mr. Trump that was brought by the New York State attorney general’s office. Mr. McConney was also a defendant in the case.After 35 years at the Trump Organization, he said on the stand that he could no longer handle working there amid its legal challenges.“I just wanted to relax and stop being accused of misrepresenting assets for the company that I loved working for,” he said in November.The judge who ruled in the civil fraud case, Arthur F. Engoron, barred Mr. McConney from serving as an officer or director of a New York company for three years and issued a lifetime ban on serving in a financial management role at a New York company. More