Michael Cohen, a convicted perjurer, former lawyer and one-time political fixer for Donald Trump, started testifying against him Monday in New York, telling jurors how, at Trump’s behest, he helped orchestrate hush money payments to keep people quiet about their salacious claims against him as he ran for the presidency in 2016.
Cohen testified how he negotiated a $30,000 payment to a doorman at a Trump property in New York who was making what turned out to be a false allegation, that Trump had fathered an out-of-wedlock child.
Later, Cohen told the 12-member jury he helped negotiate, through the grocery store tabloid National Enquirer, a $150,000 hush money deal with Playboy model Karen McDougal to keep her from talking publicly about her claim of a 10-month affair with Trump in 2006 and 2007.
Cohen said that when he first mentioned McDougal’s name to Trump, he said, “She’s really beautiful.” But when Cohen warned Trump that McDougal was shopping her story, Trump told him to “make sure it doesn’t get released.”
Trump has denied McDougal’s claim of an affair, and she is not expected to be called as a witness in the case.
But Cohen’s account supported earlier testimony in the four-week trial from the tabloid’s publisher, David Pecker, about how he paid McDougal for her story with no intention of publishing any information about the alleged liaison with Trump. It was a scheme that came to be known as “catch and kill,” to bury negative stories about Trump to help him win the White House.
Pecker said he paid the money to McDougal and expected to get paid back by Trump but never was.
After testifying about McDougal, Cohen was set to describe the central events in the allegations against Trump.
The 77-year-old Trump is accused in a 34-count indictment of falsifying his Trump Organization business ledgers to hide reimbursements to Cohen for a $130,000 hush money payment Cohen made to porn film star Stormy Daniels just before voters headed to the polls eight years ago. The payment was to keep her from talking about her claim of a one-night tryst with Trump in 2006.
Trump has denied Daniels’ claim of a liaison at a Lake Tahoe celebrity golf tournament in the western state of Nevada. He said the 2017 reimbursements to Cohen were for his legal work. Trump also has denied all the criminal charges he faces.
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.
But the relationship soured between the two men in 2018 when Cohen pleaded guilty to a campaign finance violation linked to the hush money deal with Daniels and other offenses, including perjury for lying to Congress about a prospective Trump real estate deal in Moscow. Cohen served 13½ months in a federal prison and a year-and-a-half in home confinement.
Since his release, he 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 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 avoided talking to him whenever he could.
Prosecutors have often elicited such a negative portrait of Cohen, their star witness, knowing full well that Trump’s defense lawyers will brand him as a convicted liar not to be believed.
But prosecutors are poised to have Cohen tell the jurors how, just before the election eight years ago, “at the direction of” Trump, he made the hush money payment to Daniels. They allege that Cohen then met with Trump in the White House’s Oval Office just weeks after Trump was inaugurated to discuss the reimbursement plan.
Trump’s defense lawyers have suggested the payment to the porn star was an effort by the then-future president to hide Daniels’ claim of a sexual liaison with Trump to keep his wife, Melania, from hearing about it and had nothing to do with trying to influence the outcome of the 2016 election.
The former president’s team has also suggested that Cohen, without Trump’s knowledge, made the hush money payment to Daniels out of the kindness of his heart.
But one of Trump’s closest White House aides, Hope Hicks, scoffed at that suggestion, saying that “would be out of character for Michael.”
In a tedious, document-by-document presentation last week, two Trump company payroll officials testified how they handled 11 invoices, 11 vouchers and 12 checks linked to the 2017 reimbursement payments to Cohen and that Trump signed most of the reimbursement checks to Cohen.
Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass told New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan 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 often said he plans to testify in his own defense to deny Daniels’ claim of their alleged liaison and the criminal charges he is facing.
It is not yet clear, though, whether Trump will take the witness stand knowing that he would face a vigorous cross-examination by prosecutors.
