(PatriotWise.com) — Former lawyer Michael Cohen, the key witness in District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s hush money case against Donald Trump, took the stand on Monday, where he testified that Trump regularly received updates on the efforts to tamp down scandalous stories when he was running for president in 2016.
During his first day of testimony, Cohen claimed that Trump was intimately involved in the payments made to two women to keep them from going public with their affairs with the presidential candidate and personally signed off on the plan to falsify the business records to hide the hush money payments.
Cohen claimed that when Trump learned about adult film actress Stormy Daniels’ claims, he told Cohen that they had to “stop this from getting out.” Similarly, when Cohen told Trump that former model Karen McDougal was threatening to go public about her affair with Trump, the 2016 candidate instructed Cohen to “make sure it doesn’t get released.
Cohen said he paid Stormy Daniels’ $130,000 hush money payment himself in October 2016, saying he decided to pay it himself to protect his former client, who wanted to delay the agreement until after the 2016 election.
Cohen told the jury that Trump wanted to delay paying Daniels because if he won the 2016 election, then Daniels’ accusation would no longer be relevant, and if he lost, her accusation wouldn’t matter to him.
The prosecution alleges that the 11 checks Cohen received from Trump the year following the October 2016 hush money payment were falsely itemized as legal fees. Cohen confirmed in his testimony that Trump approved the plan to reimburse him for paying Daniels out of his own pocket.
Trump is charged with 34 felonies related to falsifying business records to hide the hush money payments.
The former president pleaded not guilty to the charges and has denied the affairs.
Cohen returned to the stand on Tuesday to continue his direct testimony.
Trump’s attorneys are expected to attack the former fixer’s credibility during cross-examination, including his guilty plea for lying to Congress. In a separate civil case against Trump, Cohen admitted that he lied under oath.
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