Closing summary
Donald Trump’s New York criminal trial entered its third week on Tuesday, here’s a recap of what happened today:
Trump was joined by his son Eric, marking the first time a member of his family has attended his trial. Also in attendance on Tuesday was the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton.
Judge Juan Merchan fined Trump $9,000 for nine violations of a gag order designed to protect trial participants from his abuse, imposing the maximum financial penalty allowed under New York state law. Merchan ordered Trump to remove the offending posts on Truth Social and his campaign website and warned that further violations could result in jail time. The posts were taken down by Tuesday afternoon.
Private banker Gary Farro returned to the stand on Tuesday morning to continue his testimony on the alleged dodgy financial maneuvering used to hide Trump’s dirty laundry from American voters. Last week, Farro said that in 2015 he became the contact for Michael Cohen – then Trump’s attorney – at First Republic Bank, where he says he witnessed Cohen’s financial chicanery to protect Trump.
Keith Davidson, former attorney for both Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, was called to the stand on Tuesday afternoon. Davidson represented both Daniels and McDougal in hush-money negotiations with Cohen, Trump’s then lawyer and fixer. Davidson’s testimony could be crucial in supporting prosecutors’ argument that Trump and his allies paid to stop tabloid stories about the former president’s alleged affairs with Daniels and McDougal before the 2016 election.
Davidson testified that he began representing McDougal in 2016 “to provide advice and counsel … regarding a personal interaction that she had” with Trump. Davidson reached out to Dylan Howard, the editor of the National Enquirer, promising a “blockbuster Trump story”. Howard replied by text message: “I will get you more than ANYONE for it. You know why.”
During negotiations with Howard, Davidson joked that as part of the agreement, “throw in an ambassadorship for me. I’m thinking the Isle of Man.” Asked to explain the joke, Davidson told the jury it was about Trump’s presidential run.
Davidson was questioned by prosecutors about texts in which he was asked whether Trump had cheated on his wife. In those texts, Howard asked Davidson: “Did he cheat on Melania?” “‘I really cannot say yet, sorry,’” Davidson said, reading his text to Howard aloud.
Davidson testified that the leak of Trump’s Access Hollywood tape had “tremendous influence” on the interest in Stormy Daniels’s story. He said that Daniels’s agent, Gina Rodriguez, had reached a deal with Howard for the tabloid to acquire the rights to her story for $120,000, but Howard backed out of the deal.
Howard told Rodriguez to call Cohen and complete the deal directly with him, but she refused to negotiate with him following a previous interaction after which she described Cohen as a “jerk” and “very, very aggressive”. Rodriguez asked Davidson to step in and negotiate the deal with Cohen, he testified.
Davidson said he used a pair of pseudonyms to disguise the parties involved: Stormy Daniels became Peggy Peterson; Donald Trump became David Dennison.
Davidson testified that the payment to Daniels did not come even after both parties had reached a deal. Cohen made a series of excuses for the delay, Davidson said, noting that he “thought he was trying to kick the can down the round until after the election”.
Davidson was asked if Cohen ever told him whom he was representing in the Daniels negotiations. He said the implication was clear and that Cohen “leaned on his close affiliation with Donald Trump … He let me know it at every opportunity he could that he was working for Donald Trump.”
Multiple other witnesses also took to the stand on Tuesday, including Robert Browning, executive director of the C-SPAN archives who was largely called in a custodial capacity to discuss the facts surrounding media that prosecutors are admitting; and Phillip Thompson, who works for a court reporting company.
Court will resume on Thursday at 9.30am ET with a gag order hearing, after which Davidson is expected to return to the stand.
Updated
Donald Trump, speaking to the media after leaving court this afternoon, railed against the criminal trial, describing it as “nonsense” and a “real disgrace”.
Speaking about the gag order, for which he was fined $9,000 for violating by the judge, Trump said it was “totally unconstitutional”, adding:
I’m the Republican candidate for president of the United States … And I’m sitting in a courthouse all day long listening to this stuff.
