On the docket: prosecutors push the paper trail
After weeks of testimony that focused on some of the more salacious, tabloidy aspects of why former president Donald Trump wanted to keep his alleged affairs under wraps before the 2016 election, his hush-money trial turned to much drier – but arguably more crucial – testimony on Monday.
The trial shifted from a focus on how Trump and his allies coordinated to keep quiet the two women who allege they had affairs with him, to a focus on the felonies he has actually been charged with: 34 counts of falsifying business records. That requires following the paper trail of the money Trump paid to his fixer and attorney Michael Cohen. Trump’s former employees – not just at the White House but at his private company – are the ones that can speak to that.
The day’s first witness was former Trump Organization controller Jeffrey McConney, who was there under subpoena, with his attorneys paid for by Trump’s company.
His testimony helped solidify prosecutors’ claims that Trump was well aware of the allegedly illegal repayment plan to Cohen for paying the adult film star Stormy Daniels for her silence.
Allen Weisselberg, the chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, was given the authority to greenlight major company invoices after Trump became president. McConney said that at a meeting, Weisselberg told him: “We have to reimburse Michael.”
Referring to contemporaneous notes that he took during that meeting, McConney said Weisselberg told him to pay Cohen $360,000: $130,000 to reimburse the amount he’d paid Daniels, a $50,000 bonus, and an additional $180,000 to cover the taxes. That sum would allegedly be paid out in monthly installments. McConney said he was unaware of any other time in his 35 years with the company when an expense had been doubled because of taxes.
McConney said that starting in March 2017, repayments would come from Trump’s personal account, not the trust that held his assets. That month, when Cohen asked him about the status of one of his monthly repayments, he emailed back: “DJT needs to sign check.” He testified that they had to get the physical check to the White House so Trump could sign it himself.
Prosecutors displayed ledger reports showing repayments to Cohen, with McConney explaining how each was coded as a “legal expense” and a “retainer,” after testifying that he had never seen a retainer agreement for Cohen.
Trump’s attorneys looked to undercut prosecutors’ argument by questioning whether Trump actually knew about those labels. McConney testified he had selected “legal expense” in the accounting system because he had to pick a drop-down category in the system and always selected that for payments to attorneys. He said he rarely talked to Trump, and never discussed the company’s accounting system with Trump. That casts some doubt on whether Trump knew about how the payments were being described, which undercuts the charge that he knowingly falsified business records.
Next up on the witness stand was Deborah Tarasoff, an accounts payable supervisor with the Trump Organization. She testified that Trump kept close tabs on what he paid out of his personal checking account, bolstering the prosecution’s case that Trump knew what was going on when he signed Cohen’s reimbursement checks. Tarasoff pointed out that for some time in spring 2017 the payments to Cohen were coming from Trump personally, not from his trust, and confirmed that it was Trump’s own signature on checks from June and July 2017.
Prosecutors had spent the first weeks of the trial focused on the lead-up to the 2016 campaign, working hard to show then National Enquirer boss David Pecker’s agreement to be the Trump campaign’s “eyes and ears” and kill stories to help his election prospects, his work to bury Playboy model Karen McDougal’s allegations of an affair, and Cohen’s agreement to pay Daniels directly at Trump’s alleged behest before the 2016 election.
That’s necessary because they need to show Trump’s alleged falsification of business records as he repaid Cohen was done to cover up a previous crime to be able to charge Trump with felonies rather than misdemeanors: Under New York law, it’s illegal to “conspire to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means.”
Sidebar: judge holds Trump in contempt, threatens jail (again)
The day kicked off with Judge Juan Merchan once again holding Trump in contempt for violating his gag order – and once again threatening jail time if Trump continues to flout the order.
“As much as I do not want to impose a jail sanction,” Merchan told Trump, “I want you to understand that I will, if necessary, and appropriate.”
Merchan ruled that Trump had clearly violated Merchan’s gag order to not publicly discuss potential witnesses and the jury on one of the four instances that prosecutors highlighted, and fined him another $1,000 for the violation – the maximum financial penalty allowed under New York law, and the tenth fine Trump has accrued.
“It appears that the $1,000 fines are not a deterrent,” Merchan told Trump.
Trump made the four public comments and posts before Merchan had ruled on the previous gag-order violations. Merchan ruled on Monday that three of alleged violations were not “beyond a reasonable doubt” because in two instances, Trump was attacking his former fixer and attorney Michael Cohen, who has publicly attacked him. Despite Trump publicly discussing Pecker after his testimony in the case, Merchan said the third example was not definitively a “veiled threat” to witnesses.
But Merchan made clear the fourth instance, where Trump had discussed the jury, was out of bounds. Trump had whined in a 22 April interview that he could not get a fair jury because Manhattan was “95% Democrats” and “just a purely Democrat area”. Merchan said that wasn’t acceptable.
After trial concluded on Monday, Trump didn’t sound ready to back off, however. “This judge has given me a gag order and said, ‘You’ll go to jail if you violate.’ And frankly, you know what, our constitution is much more important than jail. It’s not even close. I’ll do that sacrifice any day,” he told reporters.
What’s next
The trial will resume on Tuesday morning. Prosecutors told Merchan on Monday they expect to be done presenting their case in roughly two weeks.
