Over the next year, Pecker said he carried out this role. His testimony was corroborated by Keith Davidson, an attorney who represented both Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal. Around June 2016, McDougal considered going public with her story of a yearlong affair with Trump. But Pecker bought the rights to that story, with the expectation that he would be reimbursed by Trump. That never happened.
In early October 2016, according to the testimony of former Trump communications aide Hope Hicks, the campaign was rocked by the release of the Access Hollywood tape, where Trump could be heard boasting “When you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the p****.”
The next day, Daniels threatened to go public with accusations she’d had a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006 in a Lake Tahoe hotel suite during a celebrity golf tournament, according to Pecker, Cohen and Davidson.
In her testimony, Daniels said there was a “power imbalance” when, after leaving the suite’s restroom, she found Trump on the hotel bed in his underwear. That’s when, Daniels said, they had sex.
She testified that Trump had dangled a possible role on his TV show Celebrity Apprentice. This detail — that the sex wasn’t entirely wanted — caused the defense to request a mistrial, which was denied. It also provided a motive for Trump to suppress the story. Prosecutors said, “Trump knew what happened in that hotel room” and didn’t want it to come out. The adult film actor’s testimony also included intimate details of her alleged sexual encounter, some of which Judge Juan M. Merchan agreed with the defense were not necessary.
As October drew to a close, Cohen testified, he frantically opened bank accounts and tried to come up with a way to pay the $130,000 to keep Daniels quiet. But Trump, Cohen said, wanted to delay the payment until after the election, with the idea that after that it wouldn’t matter if Daniels was paid.
This point, that Trump was making the payment to influence the election by keeping women voters on board, was corroborated by a number of other witnesses. Hicks testified Trump, by then in the White House, told her that it was better the story came out in 2018, rather than 2016.
Cohen ultimately wired the money himself to Daniels, with the understanding, he said, that he would be repaid by Trump. Cohen testified to a number of conversations with Trump, backed up by phone records, including on the day he wired the payments. But the defense rattled Cohen on cross-examination when it presented evidence that one of the calls which Cohen had said was made through Trump’s bodyguard, Keith Schiller, was instead with Schiller about threats from a 14-year-old prankster.
Still, the heart of the case rested on the testimony of what happened after the election, when the records were falsified, in particular the handwritten notes and documents from the Trump Organization’s former comptroller, Jeff McConney.
McConney authenticated a key record: the bank statement showing Cohen’s wire transfer. That record included handwritten notes from Cohen and Trump’s former chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, describing the $130,000 payment that would be “grossed up” to cover Cohen’s taxes. That sum, combined with another reimbursement and a bonus, for a total of $420,000, was paid out over 12 months at a rate of $35,000 per month.
The payments would be described as pursuant to a “legal retainer.” (Weisselberg, who is serving jail time for perjury in Trump’s civil fraud trial, did not testify.)
On the stand, Cohen described a repayment scheme that formed the basis of the 34 counts of falsified business records: 11 falsified invoices, 12 falsified ledger entries and 11 checks falsely recording the repayment as legal “retainers.” Nine of the checks were signed by Trump, himself.
Cohen said he and Weisselberg met and discussed the agreement with Trump shortly before he left for Washington, on or about Jan. 17, 2020. Cohen said Trump approved the deal, saying at the end of the meeting that “it was going to be one heck of a ride” in Washington. Cohen said he and Trump discussed the arrangement again, in early February, in the Oval Office. Photos and White House records corroborated that the two met in the Oval Office at the time.
The defense presented just two witnesses, including Robert Costello, an attorney who wanted to represent Cohen after Cohen’s home and office were searched by the FBI in 2018. Costello had been put on the stand to refute Cohen’s claim that Costello was pressuring Cohen to stay on Trump’s “team.” But Costello’s emails showed that Trump was deciding which of Cohen’s lawyers he wanted to pay, and that Costello was concerned about not giving “the appearance that we are following instructions from [Rudy] Giuliani or the president,” referring to the former New York City mayor who was Trump’s lawyer at the time.
How this conviction could affect the 2024 election
This likely is the only one of Trump’s four ongoing criminal cases that will be heard ahead of the 2024 election in November, since federal trials in Washington, D.C., and Florida, and a state case in Georgia are in various stages of delays.
This decision in New York is likely to have rippling effects as Trump campaigns as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. For now, the other 54 criminal charges he faces have not turned off potential voters and, among some Republicans, the cases have bolstered support for him. However, a conviction may not play well with independent and swing voters.
The latest NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll, from May, showed that 17% of voters said they would be less likely to vote for Trump if he is convicted, while 15% said they would be more likely to vote for him. And 67% of registered voters nationally say it makes no difference to their vote if Trump is found guilty in his hush money trial.
