A New York judge partially lifted a gag order on Donald Trump following his conviction on criminal charges stemming from an effort to influence the 2016 election by buying a porn star’s silence. File
| Photo Credit: AFP

A New York judge partially lifted a gag order on Donald Trump on Tuesday following the Republican presidential candidate’s conviction on criminal charges stemming from an effort to influence the 2016 election by buying a porn star’s silence. The revised order now allows Trump to speak publicly about witnesses in the case and removes a prohibition on his commenting about the jury, but keeps in place restrictions on his statements about individual prosecutors and others involved in the case.

A separate order restricting Trump or anyone else from identifying members of the anonymous jury remains in effect, according to Tuesday’s order from Justice Juan Merchan. Trump’s lawyers argued the gag order was stifling his campaign speech and said it might limit his ability to respond to attacks from Democratic President Joe Biden during their forthcoming debate on Thursday.

Prosecutors with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office said limits on Trump’s speech about trial witnesses were no longer needed. But they urged Merchan to keep in place restrictions on his comments about jurors, court staff and individual prosecutors, citing risks to their safety.

In the first criminal trial of a U.S. president, a Manhattan jury on May 30 found Trump guilty of covering up his former lawyer Michael Cohen’s $130,000 hush money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, who was threatening to go public before the 2016 election with her story of a sexual encounter with Trump. Trump, elected to a four-year term that year, denies the alleged 2006 encounter and has vowed to appeal his conviction. Sentencing is scheduled for July 11, four days before his party convenes to formally nominate him to challenge Biden for president ahead of the Nov. 5 election.

Merchan imposed the gag order before the trial began in April, finding that Trump’s history of threatening statements posed a risk of derailing the proceedings. The judge fined Trump $10,000 for violations of the order during the seven-week trial and warned him on May 6 that he would be jailed if he ran afoul of the order again.

In arguing some restrictions were still needed, prosecutors said Trump’s supporters had attempted to identify members of the anonymous jury and threatened violence against them. “There thus remains a critical need to protect the jurors in this case from attacks by defendant and those he inspires to action,” they wrote in a June 20 court filing.

Defense lawyers Todd Blanche and Emil Bove in a June 11 court filing argued that holding Trump accountable for “harassing communications” by “independent third parties” violated his right to free speech.

They said Trump’s political opponents were using the restrictions as a “political sword.” They also said Trump was unable to respond to public attacks from Cohen and Daniels, who testified on behalf of the prosecution at trial.

The order does not prevent Trump from criticizing the case or from speaking about Merchan and Bragg.

Washington:

Republicans rallied behind former US president Donald Trump who on Thursday was convicted of a felony as a grand jury in New York found him guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records. This made him the first former president to be convicted of a felony.

The jury found that the 77-year-old presumptive Republican presidential candidate falsified the records in a scheme to influence his 2016 presidential election through hush money payments to a porn actor, Stormy Daniels, who had said she had sex with Trump.

Cutting across internal party divisions, the Republicans rallied around Trump as the jurors unanimously reached a verdict in the hush money criminal case.

“This will backfire,” said Indian-American Vivek Ramaswamy, who over the past few months has emerged as a close aide and confidant of Trump.

“The prosecutor is a politician who promised to nail Trump. The judge’s daughter is a Democrat operative who literally *raised dollars from the trial* while her father presided over it. The jury instructions said they didn’t have to agree on the crime to convict,” he said.

The prosecutor is a politician who promised to nail Trump.

The judge’s daughter is a Democrat operative who literally *raised $$ from the trial* while her father presided over it.

The jury instructions said they didn’t have to agree on the crime to convict.

This will backfire.

— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) May 30, 2024

“Dems could have saved a lot of time by announcing the verdict first, and then having the trial,” said former Indian-American Governor Bobby Jindal from Louisiana.

“Pretty neat trick that the same Dem DA who makes violent felonies disappear conjured up these felonies,” he said.

House Speaker Mike Johnson described it as a shameful day in American history. “Democrats cheered as they convicted the leader of the opposing party on ridiculous charges, predicated on the testimony of a disbarred, convicted felon,” he said.

“This was a purely political exercise, not a legal one. The weaponisation of our justice system has been a hallmark of the Biden administration, and the decision today is further evidence that Democrats will stop at nothing to silence dissent and crush their political opponents,” Johnson said.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said extremist Democrats have undermined democracy by weaponising the courts to operate like a banana republic that targets their political opponents.

“Today’s verdict is a defeat for Americans who believe in the critical legal tenet that justice is blind. It was clear from the start that Biden teamed up with heavily biased DA Alvin Bragg to go after his political opponent regardless of wrongdoing – while hardened criminals are set free in New York to commit more violent crimes against innocent citizens,” he said.

He alleged that this is nothing more than an attempt to interfere with the 2024 election. “The radical Democrats behind this abuse of our justice system will not prevail. The voters will settle this on November 5th,” he said.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said the verdict represents the culmination of a legal process that has been bent to the political will of the actors involved: a leftist prosecutor, a partisan judge and a jury reflective of one of the most liberal enclaves in America – all in an effort to ‘get’ Donald Trump.

“That this case – involving alleged misdemeanour business records violations from nearly a decade ago – was even brought is a testament to the political debasement of the justice system in places like New York City. This is especially true considering this same district attorney routinely excuses criminal conduct in a way that has endangered law-abiding citizens in his jurisdiction,” he said.

“Absolute injustice. This erodes our justice system. Hear me clearly: You cannot silence the American people. You cannot stop us from voting for change. Joe Biden – you’re fired. We the People stand with Donald J. Trump,” said Senator Tim Scott.

“This is a politically-motivated sham trial. The American people decide our elections. Donald Trump will be our next president,” said Sarah Huckbee Sanders, the Governor of Arkansas.

“This was a sham show trial. The Kangaroo Court will never stand on appeal. Americans deserve better than a sitting US President weaponising our justice system against a political opponent – all to win an election,” said Texas Governor Greg Abbott.

“This verdict is a disgrace, and this trial should have never happened. Now more than ever, we need to rally around [President Donald Trump], take back the White House and Senate, and get this country back on track. The real verdict will be Election Day,” said Senator John Cornyn.

Senator Ted Cruz said that this is a dark day for America. “This entire trial has been a sham, and it is nothing more than political persecution. The only reason they prosecuted Donald Trump is because Democrats are terrified that he will win reelection,” he said.

“This disgraceful decision is legally baseless and should be overturned promptly on appeal. Any judge with a modicum of integrity would recognise that this entire trial has been utterly fraudulent,” Cruz said.

“This verdict is the corrupt result of a corrupt trial, a corrupt judge, and a corrupt DA. We will stand with President Trump now more than ever to save the country,” said Congressman Matt Gaetz. 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Donald Trump’s lawyers rested their defence on May 21 without the former president taking the witness stand in his New York hush money criminal trial, moving the case closer to the moment when the jury will begin deciding his fate.

“Your honor, the defence rests,” Mr. Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanche told the judge. Mr. Trump’s team concluded with testimony from a former federal prosecutor who had been called to attack the credibility of the prosecution’s key witness, one of two people summoned to the stand by the defence. The Manhattan district attorney’s office called 20 witnesses over 15 days of testimony before resting its case Monday.

The jury was sent home for a week, until May 28, when closing arguments are expected, but the attorneys planned to return to the courtroom later Tuesday to discuss how the judge will instruct jurors on deliberations. Trump, the first former American president to be tried criminally, did not stop to speak as he left the courthouse and ignored a question about why he did not testify.

Political twist to the proceedings

Mr. Trump had previously said he wanted to take the witness stand in his own defence, but there was no requirement or even expectation that he do so. Defendants routinely decline to testify. His attorneys, instead of mounting an effort to demonstrate Mr. Trump’s innocence to jurors, focused on attacking the credibility of the prosecution witnesses. That’s a routine defence strategy because the burden of proof in a criminal case lies with the prosecution. The defense doesn’t have to prove a thing.

Yet even as the Mr. Trump denounces the trial as a politically motivated travesty of justice, he has been working to turn the proceedings into an offshoot of his presidential campaign. He’s capitalised on the trial as a fundraising pitch, used his time in front of the cameras to criticise President Joe Biden and showcased a parade of his political supporters.

Prosecutors have accused the presumptive Republican presidential nominee of a scheme to scoop up and bury negative stories in an illegal effort to influence the 2016 presidential election. Mr. Trump has pleaded not guilty and denied any wrongdoing. It’s the first of Trump’s four criminal cases to go to trial, and quite possibly the only one before the 2024 presidential election.

“They have no case,” Mr. Trump said May 21 morning before court adjourned. “There’s no crime.”

The prosecution’s case

Jurors have been given a lesson on the underbelly of the tabloid business world, where Trump allies at the National Enquirer launched a plan to keep seamy, sometimes outrageous stories about Mr. Trump out of the public eye by paying tens of thousands of dollars to “catch and kill” them. They watched as a porn actress, Stormy Daniels, recounted in discomfiting detail an alleged sexual encounter with Mr. Trump in a hotel room. He says nothing sexual happened between them.

And they sat intently in the jury box as Trump’s former-lawyer-turned-foe Michel Cohen placed the former president in the middle of the scheme to buy Daniels’ story to keep it from going public as Republicans were wringing their hands in distress over the fallout from the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape.

But the crux of the prosecution’s case centres not on the spectacle, but on business transactions, including internal Trump Organization records in which payments to Cohen were falsely labelled legal expenses.

Prosecutors argued that those payments were really reimbursements to Cohen doled out in chunks, for a $130,000 payment he made on Mr. Trump’s behalf to keep Ms. Daniels quiet. Mr. Trump has been charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records.

As he left a news conference Tuesday with supporters of the former president outside the courthouse, Mr. Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. defended his father’s decision not to testify. “There’d be absolutely no reason, no justification to do that whatsoever. Everyone sees it for the sham that it is,” he said.

Rival testimonies

The final witness was Robert Costello, called in to undermine Cohen’s credibility. The two had a professional relationship that splintered in spectacular fashion. During his testimony Monday, he angered the judge by rolling his eyes and talking under his breath. The judge cleared the courtroom and threatened to remove him if he didn’t show more respect for decorum.

Mr. Costello had offered to represent Cohen soon after the lawyer’s hotel room, office and home were raided and as Cohen faced a decision about whether to remain defiant in the face of a criminal investigation or to cooperate with authorities in hopes of securing more lenient treatment.

He has repeatedly maligned Cohen’s credibility and was even a witness before last year’s grand jury that indicted Trump, offering testimony designed to undermine Cohen’s account. In a Fox News Channel interview last week, Mr. Costello accused Cohen of lying to the jury and using the case to “monetise” himself.

He contradicted Cohen’s testimony describing Mr. Trump as intimately involved in all aspects of the hush money scheme. He told jurors on Monday that Cohen told him Mr. Trump “knew nothing” about the hush money payment to Ms. Daniels. “Michael Cohen said numerous times that President Trump knew nothing about those payments, that he did this on his own, and he repeated that numerous times,” he testified.

Cohen, however, testified earlier Monday that he had “no doubt” that Mr. Trump gave him a final sign-off to make the payments to Daniels. In total, he said he spoke with Trump more than 20 times about the matter in October 2016.

Prosecutors have said that they want to show that Costello was part of a pressure campaign to keep Cohen in Trump’s corner once the then-attorney came under federal investigation. On that theme, Hoffinger asked Costello about a 2018 email in which he assured Cohen that he was “loved” by Trump’s camp, “they are in our corner” and “you have friends in high places.”

Asked who those “friends in high places” were, Mr. Costello said he was talking about Mr. Trump, then the president. He bristled as he insisted he did not feel animosity toward Cohen and did not try to intimidate him. “Ridiculous. No,” he said to the latter.

Team Trump’s long-shot request

The judge has yet to rule on a defence request to throw out the charges before jurors even begin deliberating based on the argument that prosecutors have failed to prove their case. The defence has suggested Mr. Trump was trying to protect his family, not his campaign, by squelching what he says were false claims. Such long-shot requests are often made in criminal cases but are rarely granted.

Mr. Blanche argued that there was nothing illegal about soliciting a tabloid’s help to run positive stories about Trump and identify potentially damaging stories before they were published. No one involved “had any criminal intent,” he said. “How is keeping a false story from the voters criminal?” he asked.

Prosecutor Matthew Colangelo shot back that “the trial evidence overwhelmingly supports each element” of the alleged offenses and said the case should proceed to the jury.

After the defense rested, Judge Merchan dismissed the jurors and looked ahead to closing arguments — the last time the jury will hear from either side. Deliberations could begin as early as next Wednesday. The judge told the jurors that closing arguments would normally come immediately after the defence rested, but he thought they would take at least a day. Given the impending Memorial Day holiday, “there’s no way to do all that’s needed” before then, he said. “I’ll see you in a week,” he told the 12-person panel.

Former President Donald Trump, left, speaks to the media with his lawyer Todd Blanche after attending the day’s proceedings in his hush money trial, in New York, Monday, May 20, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

After approximately five weeks, 19 witnesses, reams of documents and a dash of salacious testimony, the prosecution against Donald Trump rested its case on May 20, handing over to the defence, before closing arguments expected next week.

Mr. Trump’s team immediately sought to undermine key testimony against the former president, who is accused of covering up hush money paid to a porn star over an alleged encounter that could have derailed his successful 2016 White House bid.

His attorneys called lawyer Robert Costello — who once advised star prosecution witness Michael Cohen before falling out with him — in an apparent attempt to puncture Cohen’s credibility.

But Mr. Costello’s start on the stand was shaky at best, as his dismissive tone provoked an angry response from Judge Juan Merchan.

The judge ordered the jury out of the courtroom to admonish Costello, and, still unsatisfied, also ordered the press and others to briefly leave.

Mr. Trump, speaking to reporters afterwards, called the episode “an incredible display,” branding the proceedings “a show trial” and the judge “a tyrant.”

Extended quibbling among the two legal teams, along with the upcoming holiday weekend, means closing arguments that the judge had hoped could start on Tuesday are now anticipated for next week.

It’s unlikely and risky, but the door remains open for Mr. Trump to take the stand in the criminal trial, the first ever of a former US president.

Experts doubt he will, as it would expose him to unnecessary legal jeopardy and forensic cross-examination by prosecutors — but his lawyer Todd Blanche has raised the prospect.

Marathon questioning

On May 20, Mr. Blanche finished his third day of questioning Cohen after hours of at times digressive, at other times bruising, exchanges.

Cohen, Trump’s former personal lawyer and fixer, recounted last week how he kept Trump informed about $130,000 paid to porn star Stormy Daniels to buy her silence about an alleged affair ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers set out to paint Cohen as a convicted criminal and habitual liar, recalling his time in prison for tax fraud and lying to Congress.

Mr. Blanche also probed Cohen’s loyalty to Mr. Trump and then to the prosecution, looking to show jurors that Cohen is self-serving and willing to go to great lengths to accomplish his aims.

Mr. Blanche vied to goad Cohen, who has a reputation for a short temper that could have hurt him on the stand, but the witness largely maintained his composure.

Cohen’s story generally lined up with Ms. Daniels and David Pecker, the tabloid boss who said he worked with Mr. Trump and Cohen to suppress negative coverage during the Republican’s White House run.

After Mr. Blanche finished with him, the prosecution returned for redirect, with prosecutor Susan Hoffinger asking Cohen what the whole experience has meant for him. “My entire life has been turned upside down,” he said. “I lost my law license, my financial security… my family’s happiness… just to name a few.”

Impact on Trump’s 2024 campaign

Mr. Trump meanwhile has complained his 2024 election campaign for another White House term is being stymied by the weeks-long court proceedings, which he has to attend every day.

He did so again May 20, complaining to journalists he’s “not allowed to have anything to do with politics because I’m sitting in a very freezing cold, dark room for the last four weeks. It’s very unfair.”

Calling the case politicized, a coterie of leading Republicans have stood in the wings behind him as he gives remarks to reporters outside the courtroom.

The growing list includes several lawmakers eyeing Mr. Trump’s vice presidential pick, including Ohio Senator J.D. Vance and North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum.

Yet despite the palace intrigue and courtroom drama, the charges ultimately hinge on financial records, and whether falsifying them was done with intent to sway the 2016 presidential vote.

When the jury begins deliberating, the often juicy testimony will likely linger, but they will also have stacks of documents to consider.

For weeks, Donald Trump has sat silently in a New York courtroom while former employees and associates have testified in his criminal hush money trial. On Monday, the former U.S. president might seize the chance to tell his side of the story.

It is unclear whether Trump will take the witness stand.

Though he said before the trial began that he planned to testify, his lawyer Todd Blanche told the judge last week that he was unsure whether he would do so. Trump himself declined to tell reporters whether he will testify or not.

The first former president to stand criminal trial has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up a payment that bought the silence of porn star Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 election. Daniels had threatened to go public with her account of an alleged 2006 sexual encounter – a liaison Trump denies.

Outside the courtroom, Trump, 77, has blasted the trial as a politically motivated effort to hobble his attempt to take back the White House from Democratic President Joe Biden in the Nov. 5 election.

Inside the chamber, Trump has sat at the defendant’s table listening to Daniels tell her account of their time together in lurid detail. Other witnesses have discussed efforts to bury unflattering stories at a time Trump faced multiple accusations of sexual misbehavior.

Prosecutors said last week they expected to wrap up their presentation on Monday after remaining testimony from Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen, who made the payment to Daniels.

At that point, Trump’s legal team will get a chance to make a presentation of their own, though defense lawyers often skip that step when they believe prosecutors have failed to make their case.

Trump’s lawyers said they did not think they would need much time to call witnesses of their own – unless Trump opted to testify.

“That’s another decision that we need to think through,” Blanche said on Thursday.

If he chooses to testify, Trump will have the opportunity to convince jurors that he was not responsible for the paperwork at the heart of the case and rebut Daniels’ detailed account of their meeting in Lake Tahoe, Nevada.

He would not be restrained by a gag order that bars him in other settings from criticizing witnesses, jurors, and relatives of the judge and prosecutors.

However, he would face cross-examination by prosecutors, who could try to expose inconsistencies in his story. Any lies told under oath could expose him to further criminal perjury charges.

Trump could risk tarnishing his credibility or alienating the jury if he goes off on confusing tangents or loses his temper on the stand, said George Grasso, a retired New York judge.

“If he were to slip into campaign mode, he could play into the archetype of Donald Trump as a person who can’t control himself, as a person who’s loose with the truth,” Grasso said. “He could tank his whole case with one outburst.”

Trump last appeared as a witness in a civil business fraud trial last year, delivering defiant and rambling testimony that aggravated Justice Arthur Engoron, who was overseeing the case. Engoron would go on to order him to pay $355 million in penalties after finding he fraudulently overstated his net worth to dupe lenders.

Defendants in white-collar criminal cases typically do not testify in their own defense, but Trump would not be the only one to do so. Cryptocurrency mogul Sam Bankman-Fried and Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes are among recent high-profile defendants to take the stand. Both were convicted of defrauding investors and are now serving time in prison.

The hush money trial is widely seen as the least consequential of the four criminal prosecutions Trump faces, but it is likely the only one to go to trial before the election. Trump faces charges in Washington and Georgia of trying to overturn his 2020 loss to Biden and charges in Florida of mishandling classified documents after leaving the White House in 2021. He has pleaded not guilty in all three cases.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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.

ALSO READ | A respite: On the Trump case 

“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, with attorney Todd Blanche, speaks to the press amid his trial for allegedly covering up hush money payments linked to extramarital affairs, at Manhattan Criminal Court in New York City, on May 10, 2024. Trump is accused of falsifying business records in a scheme to cover up an alleged sexual encounter with adult film actress Stormy Daniels to shield his 2016 election campaign from adverse publicity.
| Photo Credit: REUTERS

Donald Trump’s defence attorney and Stormy Daniels went head to head on Thursday during cross-examination of the porn star’s blistering testimony, the line of questioning occasionally meandering into the bizarre and even earning a critique afterwards from the judge.

Under examination that frequently veered hostile, Ms. Daniels was quick on her feet, toeing a tight line between tenacity and vulnerability as jurors watched the defense deride her career and assail her credibility.

She clapped back for hours during the most intense testimony yet in the criminal trial, which centers on whether a $130,000 hush money payment to Ms. Daniels was fraudulently covered up with the intent of influencing the 2016 presidential election.

Mr. Trump’s lawyer Susan Necheles insisted repeatedly through her questioning that Ms. Daniels, 45, had fabricated her story of a one-off sexual encounter with Trump.

“You made all this up, right?” the counsel asked at one point, prompting Ms. Daniels to respond with an emphatic “No.”

Several moments saw Ms. Daniels accuse Ms. Necheles of putting words in her mouth: “You’re trying to make me say it’s changed, but it hasn’t changed,” she said, referring to her account of events.

Team Trump vied to cast Ms. Daniels as money-grubbing, sleazy and deceptive.

Ms. Necheles grilled Ms. Daniels over her decision to pen a book that included depictions of the encounter, and her decision to promote branded products.

“Not unlike Mr. Trump,” Ms. Daniels quipped back.

In one of the more offbeat moments of the nearly eight hours of testimony, Ms. Necheles brought up interest in Ms. Daniels in tarot cards and the paranormal, in an apparent bid to cast her as unhinged.

She then moved to present Ms. Daniels as a fabulist, mocking her work as a screenwriter and director of pornographic films while alleging that it makes her good at twisting the truth.

“So you have a lot of experience in making phony stories about sex appear to be real?” said Ms. Necheles.

“Wow, that’s not how I would put it,” Ms. Daniels said.

“The sex is real. The characters names might be different. But the sex is very real. That’s why it’s pornography,” the witness continued.

If the story with Mr. Trump were untrue, she said, “I would’ve written it to be a lot better.”

Mistrial denied, again

At the close of her marathon testimony which lasted approximately eight hours over two days, the defense asked Ms. Daniels if she knew anything about Mr. Trump’s bookkeeping — the actual crux of the case.

She said she does not.

But that wasn’t the point of calling Ms. Daniels to the stand, one prosecutor said later — she was there to detail why Mr. Trump would’ve wanted to cover up her story at the finish line of his White House bid.

That reasoning came up after jurors had been dismissed for the day, during a motion hearing that saw Team Trump try once more for a mistrial.

It was again denied, but not before Judge Juan Merchan skewered Mr. Trump’s lawyers in front of him.

“I disagree with your narrative that there is any new account here. I disagree that there is any changing story,” he said, audibly irritated.

In his extraordinary dressing down of the defence’s lawyering, Mr. Merchan said their very insistence that Ms. Daniels had made the encounter up cleared the way for the prosecution to include evidence — much of it salacious — to the contrary.

Ms. Necheles spent much of her cross-hammering on the very details they were holding up as grounds for a mistrial, Mr. Merchan said, “drilling it over and over and over again into the jury’s ears.”

“I don’t understand the reason for that,” he said during his dramatic critique, asking why the defence had not objected to the presentation of those details during direct questioning.

And that Mr. Trump’s team has been attacking Ms. Daniels from the very beginning, including during opening statements, “pits your client’s word against Ms. Daniels’ word,” Mr. Merchan said.

“That, in my mind, allows The People to do what they can to rehabilitate her and corroborate her story,” he said, using a term for the prosecution.

“Your motion for a mistrial is denied.”

New York:

Stormy Daniels finished her marathon testimony at Donald Trump’s hush money trial on Thursday with attorneys for the former president seeking to paint her as a greedy liar who profited from her allegations.

The X-rated film actress, who claims to have had sex with the married Trump in 2006, denied that she threatened the tycoon if he did not buy her silence.

“I wanted the truth to come out… to get my story protected with a paper trail so that my family didn’t get hurt,” the 45-year-old Daniels said during aggressive cross-examination by Trump’s attorney Susan Necheles.

Trump, 77, is accused of falsifying business records to reimburse his lawyer, Michael Cohen, for a $130,000 payment to Daniels on the eve of the 2016 presidential election, when the story could have proved politically fatal.

The face-off between Daniels and Team Trump took place six months before the November election, when the Republican hopeful will try to defeat Democratic President Joe Biden.

‘I hated it’

During nearly eight hours of testimony over two days, Daniels walked the New York jury through the one-night stand she said she had with Trump at a celebrity golf tournament, and then the financial settlement she says ensued.

On Thursday, Trump’s lawyers suggested Daniels was out for the money.

They accused her of appearing at strip club events promoted with a picture of Trump and the tagline “Making America Horny Again.”

“I never used that tagline — I hated it,” said Daniels who wore a green dress and a long, hooded black cardigan, her hair loose and her cadence confident.

In her testimony Tuesday, she described Trump’s pajamas, his boxer shorts, the sexual position and that he did not wear a condom.

And while she was “not threatened verbally or physically” she said she “felt ashamed I didn’t stop it, didn’t say no.”

These were details the defense argued were irrelevant to the case — but which they doubled down on and repeated frequently during cross-examination.

Trump has denied having sex with Daniels and his lawyers on Tuesday asked the judge for a mistrial on the grounds her testimony was “extremely prejudicial” in what is essentially a financial records and election-related case.

Judge Juan Merchan denied the mistrial request, and a second one lodged on Thursday.

The jury also heard from a publisher at Harper Collins books — which handled Trump’s “Think Big and Kick Ass” — as well as Trump Organization bookkeeper Rebecca Manochio and former aide Madeleine Westerhout.

The former Trump assistant — who has penned a book about her experience working in the White House and her eventual firing over divulging embarrassing details about the then-first family — broke down in tears at one point when asked about losing her job.

Westerhout, who said Trump would sometimes dictate tweets to her, appeared ever-loyal to the former US leader and called working for him at the beginning of his presidency “an incredible experience.”

She’s a witness who’s clearly sympathetic to Trump — but she confirmed communicating with Cohen to schedule a February 2017 meeting at the White House that could prove vital to proving the charges Trump faces.

Westerhout’s cross-examination will continue Friday.

Gag order remains

Merchan has imposed a gag order on Trump prohibiting him from publicly attacking witnesses and the ex-president — who has traded insults with Daniels for years, calling her “horseface” and other crude slurs — has not yet commented directly on her testimony.

Trump said on Thursday that his side had filed an appeal against the gag order in an appellate court.

His lawyer also demanded that Trump be allowed to hit back publicly at Daniels’ claims about their encounter now that she was no longer a witness.

Judge Merchan denied his request to change the gag order, which Trump has been fined $10,000 for breaking.

During the cross-examination on Thursday, Daniels accused Necheles of trying to trick her into misspeaking.

“You have a lot of experience in making phony stories about sex appear to be real,” Necheles said, noting that Daniels had directed and starred in over 150 adult films.

“If that story was untrue I would’ve written it to be a lot better,” Daniels retorted, referring to her account of the night with Trump. “I didn’t have to write this one.”

In addition to the New York case, Trump has been indicted in Washington and Georgia on charges of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

He has also been charged in Florida with allegedly mishandling classified documents after leaving the White House but that case has been postponed indefinitely.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Donald Trump’s intimate moments with an adult film star spilled out into open court on Tuesday as Stormy Daniels described her alleged affair with the former president in a highly-anticipated moment of his hush-money trial.

The testimony everybody was waiting for arrived Tuesday morning in Manhattan as Daniels took the stand to tell her story of a 2006 sexual encounter with Trump in a Lake Tahoe hotel suite.

“He was wearing silk or satin pajamas that I immediately made fun of,” Daniels said as a prosecutor questioned her about the encounter. “‘Does Hugh Hefner know you stole his pajamas?'” she recalled asking Trump.

Her vivid and often graphic testimony included fresh details on a story that has been pored over for years. The scene injected a tabloid-ready moment into the trial, with the adult-film actress confronting the former president before a jury of New Yorkers who will determine his fate. 

During a break, Judge Juan Merchan privately warned Trump’s lawyer that the ex-president could be heard uttering vulgarities during the testimony, which the judge said he would not tolerate. The day before, Merchan had threatened to jail Trump for continuing to violate a gag order barring him from publicly discussing potential witnesses.

“I understand that your client is upset at this point, but he is cursing audibly, and he is shaking his head visually and that’s contemptuous,” Merchan told attorney Todd Blanche, according to a transcript. “It has the potential to intimidate the witness and the jury can see that.”

Campaign Damage

The private and potentially embarrassing details about the night they met – including her mocking of Trump’s silk pajamas and the manner in which he allegedly initiated sex – are likely to infuriate the former president, who has denied the affair and is deeply protective of his public image. What’s less clear is how damaging the revelations will be to his case or his campaign. 

The remarkable testimony is the latest example of how Trump’s dealings with women are coming back to haunt him in court. Last year, a federal jury in Manhattan found Trump liable for sexually assaulting New York writer E. Jean Carroll in the 1990s. Another jury awarded Carroll $83.3 million in damages to punish Trump for defaming her by denying her allegation of rape.

Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee for the November election even after Carroll prevailed in court in her sexual-abuse lawsuit, and his 2016 victory over Hillary Clinton followed a string of damaging revelations about his dealings with women. That included the release of the so-called Access Hollywood tape in which he boasts about sexual assault. 

Star Witness

Daniels is at the center of a case in which Trump is accused of falsifying business records to conceal the nature of a $130,000 payment to her to keep her quiet before the 2016 election. Her testimony is crucial because the Manhattan district attorney, who brought the case last year, must convince jurors that Trump tried to conceal Daniels’s story before the election. 

If Daniels can convince jurors that a sexual encounter took place, it can bolster the district attorney’s argument about Trump’s motivation to make the hush-money payment. 

Mistrial Request

Many of the details Daniels gave the jury Tuesday have been public for years, but her answers under questioning by prosecutors included new claims that angered the defense, including a suggestion that Daniels felt pressured to have sex with Trump due to a “power imbalance.”

Daniels delivered much of her testimony in a colorful demeanor that sometimes bordered on humorous, eliciting frequent laughs from spectators. Daniels avoided looking directly at Trump, even when she walked right by him. For his part, Trump appeared to keep his eyes closed for much of her testimony.

Trump and his lawyers mostly let Daniels testify uninterrupted. It wasn’t until after the lunch break, when Trump’s lawyer Blanche seized the opportunity to ask the judge for a mistrial, arguing that the detailed testimony by Daniels had gone too far and prejudiced the jury. 

Merchan denied the mistrial motion but even so, agreed some of Daniels’s testimony had gone too far. He asked Daniels to stay focused and avoid providing “unnecessary details” in her testimony. He also chided Trump’s lawyers for not objecting to it earlier.

Before the jury came back from the break, Judge Merchan told prosecutor Susan Hoffinger that “we don’t need this level of detail, like the color of the floor.”

Salacious Details

Daniels described how she first met Trump in a Lake Tahoe hotel suite, where she’d been invited after meeting the real estate mogul at a celebrity golf tournament sponsored in part by the adult-film company where she worked. Trump’s bodyguard invited her to Trump’s hotel for dinner and when she arrived at the room, she found Trump in his silk pajamas.

Speaking rapidly during her testimony, Daniels was frequently asked to slow down by the judge. She detailed her banter with Trump, describing him as “arrogant.” That prompted Trump to suggest she should spank him, she said.

Daniels said she asked Trump about his wife, Melania. He told her not to worry about that and that they “don’t even sleep in the same room.” She said she excused herself to go to the bathroom, and found Trump waiting for her on the bed when she returned.

She regretted her decisions that had led her there that night, and said she didn’t disclose her affair with Trump because she felt “ashamed.” The consensual tryst left her shaken, Daniels said, but she stayed in touch with Trump because he promised he’d help her get on his reality TV show, The Apprentice.

Daniels said hundreds of people knew of her relationship with Trump, but few knew they had sex. Her story briefly became public in a 2011 gossip blog post. But by 2016, she decided to accept a $130,000 payment from Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen to keep quiet about the affair.

Extorting money from Trump, as the former president has suggested, wasn’t her goal, Daniels testified.

“My motivation wasn’t money,” Daniels said. “It was to get the story out.”

Cross-Examination 

Trump’s team used cross examination to portray Daniels as a liar who wanted to make money off a fake story about the former president.

Trump lawyer Susan Necheles accused Daniels at one point of making up her testimony as she went along, pointing to evidence that she’d told a Los Angeles lawyer she didn’t have sex with Trump, and that she told some entertainment news outlets that the story about the affair was false.

“You’re making it up as you sit there, right?” Necheles said.

Necheles suggested that Daniels was an extortionist and someone determined to avoid paying Trump more than $500,000 in legal fees she owed him.

“You’re looking to extort money from President Trump, right?” Necheles asked.

“False,” said Daniels.

The lawyer at one point got Daniels to say she hates Trump and that she hopes he’ll go to jail, seeking to convey to the jury that Daniels has biased feelings about Trump.

“Am I correct that you hate President Trump?” Necheles asked.

“Yes,” Daniels said.

“And you want him to go to jail?” Necheles asked.

“I want him to be held accountable,” Daniels said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Former President Donald Trump, with his attorney Todd Blanche, speaks to reporters following the day’s proceedings in his trial on May 7, 2024, in New York.
| Photo Credit: AP

Donald Trump returns to his hush money trial on May 7 facing a threat of jail time for additional gag order violations as prosecutors gear up to summon big-name witnesses in the final weeks of the case.

Stormy Daniels, the porn actor who has said she had a sexual encounter with Mr. Trump, and Michael Cohen, the former lawyer of Mr. Trump and personal fixer who prosecutors say paid her to keep silent in the final weeks of the 2016 presidential campaign, are among those who have yet to take the stand but are expected to in the coming weeks.

The jury on May 6 heard from two witnesses, including a former Trump Organisation controller, who provided a mechanical but vital recitation of how the company reimbursed payments that were allegedly meant to suppress embarrassing stories from surfacing and then logged them as legal expenses in a manner that Manhattan prosecutors say broke the law.

The testimony from Jeffrey McConney yielded an important building block for prosecutors trying to pull back the curtain on what they say was a corporate records cover-up of transactions designed to protect Mr. Trump’s Republican presidential bid during a pivotal stretch of the race. It focused on a $130,000 payment from Mr. Cohen to Ms. Daniels and the subsequent reimbursement Mr. Cohen received.

Mr. McConney and another witness testified that the reimbursement checks were drawn from Mr. Trump’s account. Yet even as jurors witnessed the checks and other documentary evidence, prosecutors did not elicit testimony May 6 showing that Mr. Trump dictated that the payments would be logged as legal expenses, a designation that prosecutors contend was intentionally deceptive.

Mr. McConney acknowledged during cross-examination that Mr. Trump never asked him to log the reimbursements as legal expenses or discussed the matter with him at all. Another witness, Deborah Tarasoff, a Trump Organisation accounts payable supervisor, said under questioning that she did not get permission to cut the checks in question from Mr. Trump himself.

“You never had any reason to believe that President Trump was hiding anything or anything like that?” Mr. Trump attorney Todd Blanche asked.

”Correct,” Ms. Tarasoff replied.

The testimony followed a stern warning from Judge Juan M. Merchan that additional violations of a gag order barring Mr. Trump from inflammatory out-of-court comments about witnesses, jurors and others closely connected to the case could result in jail time.

The $1,000 fine imposed May 6 marks the second time since the trial began last month that Mr. Trump has been sanctioned for violating the gag order. He was fined $9,000 last week, $1,000 for each of nine violations.

“It appears that the $1,000 fines are not serving as a deterrent. Therefore going forward, this court will have to consider a jail sanction,” Mr. Merchan said before jurors were brought into the courtroom. Mr. Trump’s statements, the judge added, “threaten to interfere with the fair administration of justice and constitute a direct attack on the rule of law. I cannot allow that to continue.”

Mr. Trump sat forward in his seat, glowering at the judge as he handed down the ruling. When the judge finished speaking, Mr. Trump shook his head twice and crossed his arms.

Yet even as Mr. Merchan warned of jail time in his most pointed and direct admonition, he also made clear his reservations about a step that he described as a “last resort.”

“The last thing I want to do is put you in jail,” Mr. Merchan said. “You are the former president of the United States and possibly the next president as well. There are many reasons why incarceration is truly a last resort for me. To take that step would be disruptive to these proceedings.”

The latest violation stems from an April 22 interview with television channel Real America’s Voice in which Mr. Trump criticised the speed at which the jury was picked and claimed, without evidence, that it was stacked with Democrats.

Prosecutors are continuing to build toward their star witness, Mr. Cohen, who pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the hush money payments. He is expected to undergo a bruising cross-examination from defence attorneys seeking to undermine his credibility with jurors.

Mr. Trump, the Republican Party’s presumptive presidential nominee, is charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection with the hush money payments but has pleaded not guilty and denied any wrongdoing. The trial, the first of his four criminal cases to come before a jury, is expected to last another month or more.