Former U.S. President Donald Trump was intimately involved with all aspects of a scheme to stifle stories about sex that threatened to torpedo his 2016 campaign, his former lawyer said Monday in matter-of-fact testimony that went to the heart of the former president’s hush money trial.

“Everything required Mr. Trump’s sign-off,” said Michael Cohen, Mr. Trump’s fixer-turned-foe and the prosecution’s star witness in a case now entering its final, pivotal stretch.

In hours of highly anticipated testimony, Mr. Cohen placed Mr. Trump at the centre of the hush money plot, saying the then-candidate had promised to reimburse the lawyer for the money he fronted and was constantly updated about behind-the-scenes efforts to bury stories feared to be harmful to the campaign.

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“We need to stop this from getting out,” Mr. Cohen quoted Mr. Trump as telling him in reference to porn actor Stormy Daniels’ account of a sexual encounter with Mr. Trump a decade earlier. The then-candidate was especially anxious about how the story would affect his standing with female voters.

A similar episode occurred when Mr. Cohen alerted Mr. Trump that a Playboy model was alleging that she and Mr. Trump had an extramarital affair. “Make sure it doesn’t get released,” was Mr. Cohen’s message to Mr. Trump, the lawyer said. The woman, Karen McDougal, was paid $150,000 in an arrangement that was made after Mr. Trump received a “complete and total update on everything that transpired.”

“What I was doing, I was doing at the direction of and benefit of Mr. Trump,” Mr. Cohen testified.

Mr. Trump has pleaded not guilty and denied having sexual encounters with the two women.

Mr. Cohen is by far the prosecution’s most important witness, and though his testimony lacked the electricity that defined Ms. Daniels’ turn on the stand last week, he nonetheless linked Mr. Trump directly to the payments and helped illuminate some of the drier evidence such as text messages and phone logs that jurors had previously seen.

The testimony of a witness with such intimate knowledge of Mr. Trump’s activities could heighten the legal exposure of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee if jurors deem him sufficiently credible. But prosecutors’ reliance on a witness with such a checkered past — Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the payments — also carries sizable risks with a jury and could be a boon to Mr. Trump politically as he fundraises off his legal woes and paints the case as the product of a tainted criminal justice system.

The men, once so close that Mr. Cohen boasted that he would “take a bullet” for Mr. Trump, had no visible interaction inside the courtroom. The sedate atmosphere was a marked contrast from their last courtroom faceoff, when Mr. Trump walked out of the courtroom in October after his lawyer finished questioning Mr. Cohen during his civil fraud trial.

This time around, Mr. Trump sat at the defence table with his eyes closed for long stretches of testimony as Mr. Cohen recounted his decade-long career as a senior Trump Organization executive, doing work that by his own admission sometimes involved lying and bullying others on his boss’s behalf.

Jurors had previously heard from others about the tabloid industry practice of “catch-and-kill,” in which rights to a story are purchased so that it can then be quashed. But Mr. Cohen’s testimony, which continues Tuesday, is crucial to prosecutors because of his direct communication with the then-candidate about embarrassing stories he was scrambling to suppress.

Mr. Cohen also matters because the reimbursements he received from a $130,000 hush money payment to Ms. Daniels, which prosecutors say was meant to buy her silence in advance of the election, form the basis of 34 felony counts charging Trump with falsifying business records. Prosecutors say the reimbursements were logged, falsely, as legal expenses to conceal the payments’ true purpose. Defence lawyers say the payments to Mr. Cohen were properly categorised as legal expenses.

Under questioning from a prosecutor, Mr. Cohen detailed the steps he took to mask the payments. When he opened a bank account to pay Ms. Daniels, an action he said he told Mr. Trump he was taking, he told the bank it was for a new limited liability corporation but withheld the actual purpose.

“I’m not sure they would’ve opened it,” he said, if they knew it was ”to pay off an adult film star for a nondisclosure agreement.”

To establish Mr. Trump’s familiarity with the payments,Mr. Cohen told the jury that Mr. Trump had promised to reimburse him. The two men even discussed with Allen Weisselberg, a former Trump Organization chief financial officer, how the reimbursements would be paid as legal services over monthly instalments, Mr. Cohen testified.

And though Mr. Trump’s lawyers have said he acted to protect his family from salacious stories, Mr. Cohen described Mr. Trump as preoccupied instead by the impact they would have on the campaign.

He said Mr. Trump even sought to delay finalising the Ms. Daniels transaction until after Election Day so he wouldn’t have to pay her.

“Because,” Mr. Cohen testified, “after the election it wouldn’t matter” to Mr. Trump.

Mr. Cohen also gave jurors an insider account of his negotiations with David Pecker, the then-publisher of the National Enquirer, who was such a close Mr. Trump ally that Mr. Pecker told Mr. Cohen his publication maintained a “file drawer or a locked drawer” where files related to Mr. Trump were kept.

That effort took on added urgency following the October 2016 disclosure of an “Access Hollywood” recording in which Mr. Trump was heard boasting about grabbing women sexually.

The Daniels payment was finalised several weeks after that revelation, but Monday’s testimony also centred on a deal earlier that fall with Ms. McDougal.

Mr. Cohen testified that he went to Mr. Trump immediately after the National Enquirer alerted him to a story about the alleged Ms. McDougal affair. “Make sure it doesn’t get released,” he said Mr. Trump told him.

Mr. Trump checked in with Mr. Pecker about the matter, asking him how “things were going” with it, Mr. Cohen said. Mr. Pecker responded, ‘We have this under control, and we’ll take care of this,” Mr. Cohen testified.

Mr. Cohen also said he was with Mr. Trump as he spoke to Mr. Pecker on a speakerphone in his Trump Tower office.

“David had stated that it’s going to cost them $150,000 to control the story,” Mr. Cohen said. He quoted Mr. Trump as saying: “No problem, I will take care of it,” which Mr. Cohen interpreted to mean that the payment would be reimbursed.

To lay the foundation that the deals were done with Mr. Trump’s endorsement, prosecutors elicited testimony from Mr. Cohen designed to show Trump as a hands-on manager. Acting on Trump’s behalf, Cohen said, he sometimes lied and bullied others, including reporters.

“When he would task you with something, he would then say, ‘Keep me informed. Let me know what’s going on,’” Mr. Cohen testified. He said that was especially true “if there was a matter that was troubling to him.”

Defence lawyers have teed up a bruising cross-examination of Mr. Cohen, telling jurors during opening statements that he’s an “admitted liar” with an “obsession to get President Trump.”

Prosecutors aim to blunt those attacks by acknowledging Mr. Cohen’s past crimes to jurors and by relying on other witnesses whose accounts, they hope, will buttress Mr. Cohen’s testimony. They include a lawyer who negotiated the hush money payments on behalf of Ms. Daniels and Ms. McDougal, as well as Mr. Pecker and Ms. Daniels.

After Mr. Cohen’s home and office were raided by the FBI in 2018, Mr. Trump showered him with affection on social media and predicted that Mr. Cohen would not “flip.” Months later, Mr. Cohen did exactly that, pleading guilty to federal campaign-finance charges.

Besides pleading guilty to the hush money payments, Mr. Cohen later admitted lying to Congress about a Moscow real estate project that he had pursued on Mr. Trump’s behalf during the heat of the 2016 campaign. He was sentenced to three years in prison, but spent much of it in home confinement.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump
| Photo Credit: AP

The federal judge in Florida presiding over the classified documents prosecution of former President Donald Trump has canceled the May 20 trial date, postponing it indefinitely.

The order from U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon had been expected in light of still-unresolved issues in the case and because Mr. Trump is currently on trial in a separate case in Manhattan charging him in connection with hush money payments during the 2016 presidential election. The New York case involves several of the same lawyers representing him in the federal case in Florida.

Mr. Cannon said in a five-page order Tuesday that it would be “imprudent” to finalize a new trial date now, casting further doubt on federal prosecutors’ ability to bring Trump to trial before the November presidential election.

Mr. Trump faces dozens of felony counts accusing him of illegally hoarding at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida classified documents that he took with him after he left the White House in 2021, and then obstructing the FBI’s efforts to get them back. He has pleaded not guilty and denied wrongdoing.

Mr. Trump faces four criminal cases as he seeks to reclaim the White House, but outside of the New York prosecution, it’s not clear that any of the other three will reach trial before the election.

The Supreme Court is weighing Mr. Trump’s arguments that he is immune from federal prosecution in a separate case from special counsel Jack Smith charging him with plotting to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Prosecutors in Fulton County, Georgia have also brought a separate case related to election subversion, though it’s not clear when that might reach trial.

In a courtroom showdown five years in the making, Donald Trump’s fixer-turned-foe Michael Cohen testified Tuesday that he worked to boost the supposed value of the former U.S. president’s assets to “whatever number Trump told us to.”

Mr. Trump’s lawyers — and outside court, Mr. Trump himself — by turn sought to portray Mr. Cohen as a serial deceiver who pleaded guilty to crimes that include tax evasion and telling falsehoods to Congress and a bank. During a fractious cross-examination, Mr. Cohen, a disbarred attorney, even floated his own lawyerly objections, responding to some queries with “asked and answered!”

It was a fraught face-to-face encounter between Mr. Trump and a man who once pledged to “take a bullet” for him. Mr. Cohen eventually ended up in prison and became a prominent witness against his former boss in venues from courthouses to Congress.

Now, Mr. Cohen is a key figure in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit alleging that Mr. Trump and his company duped banks, insurers and others by giving them financial statements that inflated his wealth.

“I was tasked by Mr. Trump to increase the total assets, based upon a number that he arbitrarily elected,” Mr. Cohen testified, saying that he and former Mr. Trump finance chief Allen Weisselberg labored “to reverse-engineer the various different asset classes, increase those assets, in order to achieve a number that Mr. Trump had tasked us.”

Asked what that number was, Mr. Cohen replied: “Whatever number Trump told us to.”

Mr. Trump denies Ms. James’ allegations. Outside court, Mr. Trump dismissed Mr. Cohen’s account as the words of “a proven liar.”

“The witness is totally discredited,” Mr. Trump said. “He’s a disgraced felon, and that’s the way it’s coming out.”

The former president and Republican 2024 front-runner voluntarily came to court for a sixth day this month. Mr. Cohen has said he hadn’t seen Mr. Trump for five years until now.

“Heck of a reunion,” Mr. Cohen said outside court. He insisted that “this is not about Donald Trump vs. Michael Cohen or Michael Cohen vs. Donald Trump. This is about accountability, plain and simple.”

Mr. Cohen testified that Mr. Trump would summon him and Weisselberg and say, for example: “I’m actually not worth four and a half billion dollars. I’m really worth more like six.”

Mr. Cohen said he and the finance chief would then inflate the value of Mr. Trump properties by pegging them to “comparable” real estate that was actually different — brand-new developments with higher ceilings, more sweeping views and no rent regulation, for instance.

Insurance company executives were shown the exaggerated statements, where the combination of extremely high values and low liabilities could net Trump more favorable premiums, Mr. Cohen testified. Plus, he said, Mr. Trump would deliberately show up about three-quarters of the way through his deputies’ meetings with insurers and spark a conversation to the effect that he was rich enough to self-insure if he couldn’t get a good premium.

As Mr. Cohen testified, Mr. Trump at times whispered to his lawyers or shook his head. At other points, the former president hunched forward in his seat, watching intently, or leaned back with crossed arms. He took a keen interest in Mr. Cohen’s cross-examination, gesturing to his attorneys and craning his neck to get a better view.

Mr. Trump’s lawyer Alina Habba hammered at Mr. Cohen’s 2018 federal guilty pleas and his effort now to distance himself from some of them. Although he pleaded guilty to tax evasion and to making false statements to a bank on a loan application, he said Tuesday he’d lied when he made those admissions. He suggested he’d only engaged in “tax omission” and failed to correct inaccuracies on the loan paperwork.

“You’re not going to lie to me, as well?” Ms. Habba asked pointedly. And when Mr. Cohen objected to certain questions and rattled off cases he said allowed him to do so, Ms. Habba snapped back that he was mistaken.

“If you still had your law license, you’d understand that,” she said. Another Trump lawyer, Christopher Kise, complained that Mr. Cohen was a “serial liar” who was “out of control” and seeking to “play judge.”

The actual judge, Arthur Engoron, told Mr. Cohen to answer most of the questions.

Mr. Engoron already has ruled that Mr. Trump and his company committed fraud. The trial involves remaining claims of conspiracy, insurance fraud and falsifying business records.

Mr. Trump says his assets were actually undervalued, and he maintains that disclaimers on his financial statements essentially told recipients to check the numbers out for themselves.

He has derided the case as a “sham,” a “scam” and part of an effort by Ms. James and other Democrats to drag down his campaign.

Mr. Cohen spent a decade as Mr. Trump’s fiercely loyal personal lawyer before famously breaking with him in 2018 amid a federal investigation that sent Mr. Cohen to federal prison. He is also a major prosecution witness in Mr. Trump’s separate Manhattan hush-money criminal case, scheduled for trial next spring.

Ms. James has credited Mr. Cohen as the impetus for her civil investigation, which led to the fraud lawsuit and trial. She cited Mr. Cohen’s testimony to Congress in 2019 that Mr. Trump had a history of misrepresenting the value of assets to gain favorable loan terms and tax benefits.

Earlier this month, Mr. Trump dropped a $500 million lawsuit that accused Mr. Cohen of “spreading falsehoods” and breaking a confidentiality agreement. A Mr. Trump spokesperson said the former president was only pausing the lawsuit, while campaigning and fighting four criminal cases.

In one of those criminal cases, co-defendant Jenna Ellis, an attorney, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to a felony charge over efforts to overturn Mr. Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia. She’s the fourth defendant to take a plea deal in the case.

Mr. Trump’s attorneys sought to delay the New York trial Tuesday, arguing that coronavirus cases among Ms. James’ staff put the former president’s health at risk. The attorney general’s office, in a statement, said it had taken all steps to notify the relevant parties and had followed health guidance.

Mr. Trump later complained outside court that “what they did with COVID in the courtroom was a disgrace,” but he and the attorneys beside him didn’t don masks.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Attorneys for former President Donald Trump moved a lawsuit seeking to bar him from running again for the White House from state to federal court in the first step of what promises to be a tangled legal battle that seems ultimately destined for the U.S. Supreme Court.

The liberal group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed the initial lawsuit on Wednesday in Colorado state court, arguing a Civil War-era clause prohibiting higher office for those who once swore an oath to the Constitution and then engaged in “insurrection” prevents Trump from running in 2024.

Mr. Trump’s attorneys on Thursday moved the case to federal court.

“Plaintiffs’ challenge to Colorado’s ability to place Donald Trump on the presidential ballot depends solely on the Fourteenth Amendment,” they wrote. “Trump’s basis for removal of the state court action is federal question jurisdiction under Section 3 of Fourteenth Amendment.”

CREW’s case is the first of what’s expected to be many challenges filed in various states by the group and Free Speech for People, another liberal nonprofit. Activists in other states have filed lawsuits in which they represent themselves, but legal observers contend the more robust complaints by the nonprofits are more likely to end up at the nation’s highest court, which has never ruled on the clause.

CREW can move to return the case to state court. It has requested a speedy ruling on the issues before Colorado’s Republican primary ballot is finalized on Jan. 5.