Trump signed off on hush money payment to porn star, ex-fixer Michael Cohen testifies

NEW YORK - Donald Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen told jurors on May 13 that the Republican presidential candidate personally approved a hush money payment to bury a porn star’s story of a sexual encounter before it could derail his 2016 campaign.

“Just do it,” Mr Cohen said Trump told him, instructing him to figure out the best way of paying adult film actress Stormy Daniels US$130,000 (S$176,000) to stay quiet about an alleged 2006 liaison, which he denies.

The October 2016 payment is at the centre of the historic trial, which entered its fifth week in New York state criminal court in Manhattan. Prosecutors have said they could rest their case this week.

In hours of dramatic testimony, Mr Cohen, 57, once one of Trump’s most loyal lieutenants and now the prosecution’s star witness, described multiple episodes in which Trump signed off on payments aimed at quashing sex-scandal stories while he campaigned for the highest office in the land.

In the final weeks before the 2016 election, Mr Cohen learnt that Ms Daniels was shopping her story to tabloids.

It was a pivotal moment for the Trump campaign, which was reeling from the release of an audio recording from the TV show “Access Hollywood”, in which Trump bragged about grabbing women’s genitals.

“He said to me, ‘This is a disaster, a total disaster. Women are going to hate me,’” Mr Cohen, wearing a dark suit and pink tie, testified Trump had said.

“Guys, they think it’s cool, but this is going to be a disaster for the campaign.”

The tape left the Trump campaign scrambling to contain the damage only weeks before the 2016 Election Day.

Prosecutors have said

Trump paid Mr Cohen back after the election

and hid the reimbursement by recording it falsely as a legal retainer fee in Trump’s real estate company’s records.

Trump faces 34 counts of falsifying business records tied to the reimbursement. Prosecutors say the altered records covered up election-law and tax-law violations – since the money was essentially an unreported contribution to Trump’s campaign – that elevate the crimes from misdemeanours to felonies punishable by up to four years in prison.

Trump, a former president who is running against Democratic President Joe Biden in November, has pleaded not guilty and denies having had a sexual encounter with Ms Daniels, who testified last week. He argues the case is a politically motivated attempt to interfere with his campaign to take back the White House.

Trump’s defence has suggested the payment to Ms Daniels could have been made to spare Trump and his family embarrassment, not to boost his campaign. But Mr Cohen testified that Trump appeared solely concerned with the effect on his White House bid.

“He wasn’t thinking about Melania. This was all about the campaign,” Mr Cohen said, referring to Trump’s wife. At the defence table, Trump, 77, shook his head.

Mr Cohen also told the 12 jurors and six alternates that Trump urged him to delay sending payment to Ms Daniels’ lawyer until after the election, telling him that the story would no longer matter.

Trump’s lawyers have argued that Mr Cohen, a “felon and admitted perjurer”, is lying about Trump’s involvement and acted on his own. But Mr Cohen said he would never have taken such drastic steps without Trump’s approval.

“Everything required Mr Trump’s sign-off,” Mr Cohen said.

Offering a detailed timeline of the chaotic days during the 2016 campaign’s final weeks, Mr Cohen said he set up a shell company – falsely listed as a “real estate consulting company” – to facilitate the payment through a bank across the street from New York City’s Trump Tower.

Mr Cohen described how he and campaign spokesperson Hope Hicks frantically tried to contain the fallout when the Wall Street Journal published a story detailing another hush money payment while also mentioning Ms Daniels.

Jurors saw e-mails showing the two advisers hammering out a denial, while phone records showed a number of calls between them on the day the story appeared. That testimony could undercut any defence claim that the hush money payments were not tied to the campaign.

Secret payments

Mr Cohen testified earlier in the day that Trump approved other payments to forestall damaging stories.

When Trump was preparing to announce his 2016 campaign, Mr Cohen said, Trump warned him there would be “a lot of women coming forward”. Mr Cohen said he, Trump and National Enquirer publisher David Pecker agreed to use the tabloid to boost Trump’s presidential candidacy while blocking any negative stories.

That arrangement included a US$150,000 payment from Mr Pecker’s company to former Playboy model Karen McDougal to buy her story about a year-long affair she said she and Trump had, Mr Cohen said. Trump has also denied that relationship.

Jurors were played a recording Mr Cohen said he made of a meeting in which Trump asked him: “So what do we got to pay for this? One-fifty?”

Mr Pecker previously testified at the trial that he bought Playboy model McDougal’s story in order to ensure it was never published, and that he eventually decided not to seek reimbursement from Trump.

From loyalist to enemy

For nearly a decade, Mr Cohen worked as an executive and lawyer for Trump’s company and once said he would take a bullet for Trump.

Mr Cohen said it was fair to describe his role as a fixer for Trump, testifying that he took care of “whatever he wanted”. Among his duties were threatening to sue people and planting positive stories in the press, he said.

Trump, he said, communicated primarily by phone or in person and never set up an e-mail address.

Jurors were shown multiple phone records of Mr Cohen’s calls to Trump at moments when he testified he was executing the hush money deals.

“He would comment that e-mails are like written papers, that he knows too many people who have gone down as a direct result of having e-mails that prosecutors can use in a case,” Mr Cohen said.

Mr Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to violating federal campaign finance law by paying off Ms Daniels and testified that Trump directed him to do so. Mr Cohen went to prison. Federal prosecutors did not charge Trump with any crime.

The Manhattan trial is widely seen as less consequential than three other criminal prosecutions Trump faces, all of which are mired in delays. The other cases charge Trump with trying to overturn his 2020 presidential defeat and mishandling classified documents after leaving office. Trump pleaded not guilty to all three.

Mr Cohen was expected to resume testifying on May 14. REUTERS