Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s one-time political fixer, testified Monday that the future U.S. president ordered him to make a secret $130,000 hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels just days before the 2016 election.
Cohen said the payment was to keep Daniels from talking about an alleged tryst with Trump, and then Trump disguised reimbursements to Cohen as legal fees.
Cohen spent hours on the witness stand in a New York courtroom testifying against his former boss in the first-ever criminal trial of a U.S. president.
Trump is accused in a 34-count indictment of falsifying business records at his Trump Organization real estate conglomerate to make it look like payments to Cohen in 2017 were for legal work instead of a repayment for the hush money he sent to Daniels.
In gripping testimony, Cohen told the 12-member jury hearing the case that Trump authorized the hush money payment in a meeting just ahead of the election. At the time, the Trump campaign had become aware that Daniels was looking to sell her account of sex with Trump at a 2006 celebrity golf tourney or be paid to stay quiet.
Cohen quoted Trump as saying, " 'There’s no reason to keep this thing out there, just do it.' So, he expressed to me, ‘Just do it.’”
Trump allegedly told Cohen to work out the details with the Trump Organization’s then-Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg and "figure this whole thing out.”
Cohen said that after he and Weisselberg devised a plan on how to pay Daniels and that Cohen would then be reimbursed, they told Trump and he said, “Good, good.”
Cohen said he paid Daniels the hush money out of his personal home equity line of credit and would not have made the payment on his own without Trump’s approval. After the election, Cohen testified that Trump again assured him he would be repaid.
Just days before Trump was inaugurated as the country’s 45th president in January 2017, Cohen said he and Weisselberg met with Trump at his Trump Tower office in New York and the agreement for the reimbursement was finalized.
Prosecutor Susan Hoffinger asked Cohen whether this was payment for future legal services.
"That was what it was designed to be," Cohen said.
"What was it actually?" Hoffinger asked.
"Reimbursement of my money," Cohen said.
Trump, with his eyes often closed, listened to his one-time aide’s detailed account of how he made the payment to Daniels. It was one of three hush money deals Cohen orchestrated to bury salacious claims people made about Trump in the weeks before he narrowly won the election eight years ago over Democrat Hillary Clinton.
After Monday’s court session, Trump, the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential candidate, angrily told reporters, “There’s no fraud here. There’s no crime here.”
He assailed New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, who is overseeing the case, as “highly conflicted” and “corrupt.” He complained that the judge is “keeping me from campaigning” against President Joe Biden, his likely opponent in the November election.
Cohen said he worked with The National Enquirer tabloid to buy rights to claims by two other people with the express intent that the newspaper would then bury the information without publishing it.
In one case, a doorman at a Trump property in New York was paid $30,000 after claiming — falsely as it turned out — that Trump had an illegitimate child. Playboy magazine model Karen McDougal was paid $150,000 to stay quiet about her claim of a 10-month affair with Trump in 2006 and 2007.
Trump has denied the claims by Daniels and McDougal and all 34 charges he is facing in New York.
Prosecutors have contended that Trump sanctioned the hush money payment to Daniels to hide the information from voters as they headed to the polls in 2016.
Her bid to sell her story or get paid to stay quiet came just days after The Washington Post unearthed a 2005 outtake from the celebrity-driven “Access Hollywood” show where Trump could be heard boasting about groping women with impunity because he was a star.
The Trump campaign, Cohen said, was panicked by the release of the tape, pushing them to make the hush money payment to Daniels.
Cohen testified that Trump, as he heard of Daniels’ effort to sell her story, told him, "This is a disaster, a total disaster. Women are going to hate me. This is really a disaster. Women will hate me. Guys — they think it’s cool. But this is going to be a disaster for the campaign."
The Trump defense has suggested Cohen paid the hush money to hide Daniels’ claim of the sexual encounter with Trump from his wife, Melania, not to influence the 2016 election.
Cohen disputed that, too, telling the jury that Trump expressed no such concern.
"'Don't worry,’ he goes. ‘How long do you think I’ll be on the market for? Not long.’ He wasn’t thinking about Melania. This was all about the campaign,” Cohen testified.
Trump, listening in the courtroom during Cohen’s testimony, smirked and shook his head when Cohen offered his remarks about Melania Trump.
Cohen is set to continue answering prosecutor Hoffinger’s questions Tuesday, now in the fifth week of the trial, before a Trump defense lawyer begins what is certain to be a rigorous cross-examination of him and the claims he made Monday.
Cohen pleaded guilty to a campaign finance violation in connection with the hush money payment to Daniels and other offenses, including perjury by lying to a congressional panel about a prospective Trump development in Moscow. Cohen served 13½ months in a federal prison and another year and a half in home confinement. He also was disbarred as an attorney.
Cohen, 57, described how he worked for Trump since the early 2000s, doing “whatever he wanted” and reported only to Trump at the Trump Organization.
Since his release from prison, Cohen has been on something of a mission to disparage Trump. Despite prosecutors’ efforts to rein in his contempt for Trump, Cohen recently posted a TikTok video of himself wearing a T-shirt with a picture of Trump behind bars.
With Trump making another White House run this year and at the same time sitting in a courtroom as a criminal defendant, Cohen played off that in another TikTok comment, saying, “Trump 2024? More like Trump 20-24 years."
If convicted, Trump could be placed on probation or be imprisoned for up to four years.
Cohen’s name has been mentioned almost daily during three weeks of testimony. Prosecution witnesses often described him as demanding, volatile, profane and always loyal to Trump — until he wasn’t and became the state’s key witness. One witness, Keith Davidson, Daniels’ lawyer, called Cohen a “jerk” and said he avoided talking to him whenever he could.
Prosecutors have often elicited such a negative portrait of Cohen, knowing full well that Trump’s defense lawyers, when they cross-examine him, will brand him as a convicted liar not to be believed.
Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass told Merchan last week that the prosecution could wrap up its case this week with testimony from Cohen and one other unnamed witness.
When the prosecution completes its case, Trump’s team will have a chance to present its defense. Trump has said he plans to testify in his own defense to deny Daniels’ liaison claim and the criminal charges.
It is not clear, though, whether Trump will take the witness stand knowing that he will face a cross-examination from prosecutors.
