Summary
Donald Trump sat for the second day of witness testimony in court in Manhattan on Tuesday in his criminal trial. Here’s a recap of what happened:
Judge Juan Merchan held off on deciding whether Trump should be fined $10,000 for attacking expected trial witnesses in direct violation of a gag order designed to protect trial participants from being the target of Trump’s abuse.
Merchan subjected Trump to a gag order before the trial began, covering prosecutors (but not the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg), witnesses, court employees, jurors and their families. Before the trial, Merchan then extended the gag order to cover his own family and Bragg’s family. Trump remains free to criticize Merchan himself, though doing so would be unlikely to win any favors from the judge, who will decide Trump’s sentence should the jury find him guilty.
Judge Merchan reserved ruling from the bench on Tuesday, but he appeared deeply unconvinced by arguments from Trump’s lead lawyer Todd Blanche that a series of social media posts were just responses to political attacks on Trump and therefore permitted. “Mr Blanche, you’re losing all credibility,” Merchan said.
David Pecker, Trump’s longtime ally and former publisher of the National Enquirer, was on the stand again as a prosecution witness following a brief appearance on Monday after opening statements.
Pecker told the court about being invited to a meeting with Trump and his then lawyer, Michael Cohen, in New York in 2015 after Trump had just declared his candidacy for president and was seeking a friendly and powerful media insider. “I said what I would do is I would run or publish positive stories about Mr Trump and I would publish negative stories about his opponents, and I said that I would also be the eyes and ears,” Pecker told jurors.
Pecker said he had a “great relationship” with Trump over the years and considered him a “friend”, describing the former president as “very detail oriented … almost micromanaging”.
Pecker discussed the first of three “catch and kill” schemes, involving negative stories for Trump that prosecutors allege he suppressed to help his campaign. The first involved a former Trump Tower doorman, Dino Sajudin, who alleged that Trump fathered illegitimate children. Pecker testified that he negotiated to pay $30,000 for the story, and that Cohen told him that “the boss”, referring to Trump, was “very pleased”. The story turned out not to be true, Pecker said.
Pecker also began to discuss Karen McDougal, a Playboy model who alleged that she had an affair with Trump. McDougal is expected to take the witness stand during this trial.
Trump spoke to the media outside the courtroom, where he rallied against pro-Palestinian protests happening in various US college campuses.
The court adjourned early at 2pm ET for the Passover holiday. Pecker is expected to testify further when the trial resumes on Thursday.
Updated
Donald Trump addressed the media in the hallway outside the courtroom, complaining that it was “totally freezing” inside, per pool.
Asked about his thoughts on the gag order, Trump said it was “totally unconstitutional”, adding:
I’m not allowed to talk but people are allowed to talk about me.
He later said:
I’d love to say everything on my mind.
Court adjourns for the day
The jury has walked out, and David Pecker has left the witness stand.
Before finishing his testimony for the day, Pecker said that Trump had called him at one point to ask about Karen McDougal, but that he communicated with Cohen all the other times.
As for Cohen’s demeanor? Pecker said:
Michael was very agitated – it looked like he was getting a lot of pressure.
Pecker begins to testify about Karen McDougal
And we’re on to another sex scandal-in-waiting. “Do you know of somebody named Karen McDougal?” Steinglass asked. “Yes, I do,” said David Pecker.
“Who is Karen McDougal?" “Karen McDougal was a Playboy model,” Pecker said.
“How did you first hear of her?" Pecker replied:
Dylan came to me in early June of 2016 and said that he received a call from one of his major sources, in California, that there’s a Playboy model who is trying to sell a story about a relationship that she had with Donald Trump for a year.
”What kind of relationship?” “Uh, romantic relationship,” Pecker said.
What did Pecker do?
I called Michael Cohen and I told Michael Cohen exactly what Dylan told me about this Playboy mode and that she had a relationship, I didn’t finish the conversation when he said that’s not true, absolutely untrue. I said just wait a second, this is a little different, I think we should vet this story out first. Michael Cohen said ‘yes, I think that’s a good idea.’
Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass’ continued questioning of David Pecker on this is further building the foundation for prosecution claims that the catch-and-kill scheme was meant to protect the campaign.
Even after discovering that Trump Tower doorman Dino Sajudin’s story was false, Pecker said, Michael Cohen didn’t want the tabloid head to release him from the $30,000 source agreement that barred him from discussing or shopping the story with any other outlet.
“I told Michael Cohen the story was not true, I told him that the doorman was very difficult to deal with, I mentioned to him that he was probably going t try to shop the story to someone else” but that they shouldn’t have concerns, and should just release him. Pecker continued:
Michael Cohen said, first he didn’t understand why I would ever release him, and then I said that to have him locked into us, it’s only going to cause [us] problems.
“He said when,” Pecker recalled. “I said I’d like to release him now. And he said ‘not until after the election.’”
In December 2016, Sajudin received an email indicating that he was released from their agreement.
Interestingly, the Trump loyalist revealed that he wasn’t inherently opposed to publishing the story. David Pecker said:
If the story came back true, I would have published the story shortly after it was verified.
Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass asked whether he would have before the election, or if he’d wait. Pecker said:
I would have published it after the election.
David Pecker said he had a second conversation with Michael Cohen about Trump Tower doorman Dino Sajudin’s story.
Cohen said the story was absolutely not true. He said that Mr Trump would take a DNA test, that he is German-Irish and this woman is hispanic, and it’s absolutely impossible. And I told Michael Cohen that won’t be necessary, we’ll vet the story.
“So let me be clear about something, prior to this arrangement to purchase this story from Dino Sajudin, had you ever paid a source to kill a story about Donald Trump?” Steinglas asked. Pecker replied: “No, I did not."
“What was the reason that you were willing to pay for this story at this point?” Steinglass pressed. Pecker replied:
I had a number of reasons one, I thought it was very important that [Sajudin] wouldn’t be shopping the story to other media outlets. Part two, if the story was true, and I published it, it would be probably the biggest sale of the National Enquirer since the death of Elvis Presley.
“Did you have any intention of publishing it at the time that you negotiated this deal?" “At that time, no,” Pecker said.
Pecker says he was told 'the boss will be very pleased' after paying $30,000 for doorman story
Ultimately, David Pecker decided to broker an agreement with Dino Sajudin, the former Trump Tower doorman.
“How did that come about?” Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass asked.
“I asked Dylan to negotiate a price a number, to buy the story and take it off the market,” Pecker said.
Dylan went ahead and there was two parts to this. The first part was our normal procedures is we have the source, the tipster, take a polygraph test…
“Please don’t tell us any polygraph results,” Steinglass warned. “We pursued the story,” Pecker said.
“Did you discuss the purchase of the story with Michael Cohen?" Pecker recounted:
I called Michael Cohen and I said that, ‘we have to go forward with the story’. He said, ‘how much?’ Dylan negotiated a price of $30,000. He said, ‘who’s going to pay for it?’ I said, ‘I’ll pay for it.’
This could be a very good story, I believe that it’s important that it should be removed from the market. And then he said thank you very much, thanked me, and he said the boss would be very pleased.
Steinglass asked Pecker who he thought “the boss” was. “The boss would be Donald Trump,” Pecker said.
Pecker testifies about 'catch and kill' story
We’re now moving into nitty gritty of specific catch-and-kill efforts.
“Does the name Dino Sajudin mean anything to you?” Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass asked. “Dino Sajudin was a doorman at Trump Tower.”
David Pecker said Dylan Howard, the National Enquirer editor-in-chief at the helm during the alleged hush-money schemes, apprised him that Sajudin was trying to sell a story “that Donald Turmp fathered an illegitimate girl with a maid at Trump Tower and the maid worked in Mr. Trump’s penthouse.”
Pecker said, “I called Michael Cohen and I described to him exactly what I was told by Dylan,” in keeping with his agreement with Trump.
Cohen insisted the account was “absolutely not true, but I’ll check it out,” Pecker also testified.
Updated
The court has just resumed after taking a short break, and David Pecker is returning to the witness stand.
Donald Trump was seen leaving the courtroom earlier at the start of the break, and did not wave or respond to shouted questions from reporters.
Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass is now running through Enquirer articles which were in keeping with the alleged Trump-Cohen agreement.
One headline about a political opponent, featuring a photo of a girl with an uneven mouth, stated, “Bungling Surgeon Ben Carson Left Sponge in Patient’s Brain.”
Steinglass asked:
Were these headlines run in accordance with your agreement you had struck at Trump Tower in August 2015 with Mr Trump and Michael Cohen?.
“Yes,” David Pecker said.
Steinglass pointed to another example. “Ted Cruz Shamed by Porn Star” with a photo of a buxom blonde.
We would communicate what we were doing and the direction of the article with Michael Cohen and we would also send him the PDFs of the story before it was published so [they] could see the direction they were going and he would comment on them.
Pecker says Cohen would ask him to run negative stories on Trump's political opponents
David Pecker is saying that during the campaign, Michael Cohen would call him and said “we would like you to run a negative article” on a political opponent, such as Ted Cruz, or Ben Carson, or Marco Rubio.
“Who did you understand ‘we’ to be referring to?” Steinglass pressed.
Since Michael Cohen wasn’t part of the campaign ,when he said ‘we,’ I thought he was talking about himself and Mr Trump.
Pecker recounted how Cohen repeatedly insisted he wasn’t part of the campaign, but “Michael was physically in every aspect of whatever the campaign was working on, at least at Trump organization, Trump Tower.”
Updated
The importance of this questioning cannot be overstated. Not only is the prosecutor, Joshua Steinglass, trying to establish the scheme itself – but by repeatedly asking David Pecker about his intent, and repeatedly prompting him to say the arrangement was to help Trump in the election, it bolsters their argument that the motive of the alleged hush-money scheme was to sway the 2016 race.
While this is a case claiming falsified business records, the prosecution contends that the motive behind this purportedly illicit record-keeping was to change the course of the election.
David Pecker is now going through the machinations of how this all worked.
He told his staffers: “I asked them to notify the West Coast bureau chief of the National Enquirer,” who was then instructed that “any stories that are out there that’s commenting about Donald Trump, commenting about his famiy, commenting about the election, whatever it might be, I want you to vet the stories, I want you to bring them to me, and then I said we’ll have to speak to Michael Cohen, you’ll call Michael Cohen, I’ll call him, we’ll tell him what the stories are.”
Pecker said he wanted to keep this arrangement under wraps. Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass asked, why? Pecker said:
I told him that we were going to try to help the campaign and to do that, I wanted to keep this as quiet as possible.
“Because if it came out that you were helping the campaign, it would kind of undermine the point?” Steinglass asked, prompting an objection that was ultimately sustained.
Updated
Prosector Joshua Steinglass asked David Pecker about negative stories on Bill and Hillary Clinton. Pecker said:
I was running the Hillary Clinton stories. I was running Hillary as an enabler for Bill Clinton in respect to all the womanizing, and [it] was easy for me to say I was gong to continue running those type of stories for the National Enquirer.
Did he think it would help Trump’s campaign?
I thought it was a mutual benefit – it would help his campaign, it would help me.
Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass asked specifically, why David Pecker said he told Trump he would notify Michael Cohen if he heard “anything women selling stories”.
“In a presidential campaign, I was the person that thought that there would be a lot of women would come out to try to sell their stories because Mr Trump was well known as the most eligible bachelor and dated the most beautiful women,” Pecker said.
And it was clear that based on my past experience that when someone is running for a public office like this, it is very common for these women to call up a magazine like the National Enquirer to try to sell their stories. Or, I would hear it in the marketplace, [through] other sources, that stories were being marketed.
Pecker testifies he told Trump he would be campaign's 'eyes and ears'
Fast forward to August 2015. Did there come a time when you attended a meeting in Trump Tower? Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass asked. David Pecker responded in the affirmative.
Who was present for that meeting? “Donald Trump, Michael Cohen, and Hope Hicks,” Pecker said, noting that Hicks was in and out. Pecker then ran through how this happened.
I received a call from Michael Cohen telling me The Boss wanted to see me. When I spoke to Michael Cohen, that’s how he would refer to Donald Trump, as the boss.
“Most of the time when I received a call from Michael Cohen, he wanted something,” Pecker reflected, saying he didn’t know what it was before he got there.
At that meeting, Donald, Donald Trump, and Michael, they asked me what can I do – and what my magazines could do – to help the campaign. So, thinking about it, as I did previously, I said what I would do is I would run or publish positive stories about Mr Trump and I would publish negative stories about his opponents and I said that I would also be the eyes and ears because I know that the Trump organization had a very small staff.
And then I said that anything I hear in the marketplace if I hear anything negative about yourself, or if I hear anything about women selling stories, I would notify Michael Cohen as I did over the last several years, I would notify Michael Cohen and then he would be able to [have them] killed in another magazine or have them not be published or somebody would have to purchase them.
David Pecker said Trump was “viewed as the boss” when the Enquirer conducted research on which cover subjects would sell best. He said:
So I discussed with him, and we did a poll in the National Enquirer about Mr Trump running for president, how would the readership feel? Research showed that 80% of the readership of the National Enquirer would want Mr Trump to [run] for president. And I passed that information on to [Donald] Trump and shortly after, he was being interviewed on the Today show.
David Pecker said that he and Michael Cohen were in touch over the years, when Pecker noticed something that he thought Trump should know about. It increased when Trump announced his candidacy.
I would say at a minimum of every week and if there was an issue, [it] could be daily.
In early 2015, did he and Trump ever talk about him running for President?
As I mentioned a little earlier, when Mr Trump launched the Apprentice, and then launched The Celebrity Apprentice his, I would say, the interest in Mr Trump through my magazines basically, the National Enquirer, skyrocketed.
Pecker said they had done internal polls to determine what readership wanted.
All the time, every time we did this, Mr Trump would be the top celebrity.
Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass asks: “Did you visit Mr Trump at Trump Tower on multiple occasions?” “Over the years?” David Pecker asked. “Over the years,” Steinglass said. “Yes.”
”How would you describe him as a businessman?” Pecker replied:
I would describe Mr. Trump as very knowledgable. I would describe him [as] very detail-oriented. I would describe him almost as a micromanager from what I saw, he looked at all the aspects, whatever the issue was.
“How about his approach to money?”
I thought that his approach to money, he was very cautious and very frugal.
Are you familiar with someone named Michael Cohen?” “Yes, I am.”
“Who’s Michael Cohen? “Michael Cohen was Donald Trump’s personal attorney,” Pecker said, explaining that:
I met Michael Cohen at a barmitzvah in early 2000.
Updated
Pecker asked about Trump being in control of business practices and tells court he 'reviewed the invoice, looked at the check, and he would sign it'
Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass asks David Pecker whether he had ever observed Trump’s business practices.
It appears that Steinglass is trying hard to show that Donald Trump was fully in control of his business practices – including signing off on invoices and checks and well aware of records.
This, of course, undermines any claim Trump might make that he was unaware of the questionable ledger entries. Per Pecker:
While he was reviewing the accounts payable packages, we were talking at the same time, and I noticed that he reviewed the invoice, looked at the check, and he would sign it.
Steinglass pressed: “Could you tell whether the check was stapled to the invoice?” Pecker replied:
As I recollect, the entire package was stapled together.
Updated
Pecker tells court of 'great relationship' with Donald Trump
David Pecker said he has had a “great relationship” with Donald Trump as he answered questions by the prosecution. Pecker said:
I’ve had a great relationship with Mr Trump over the years, starting in ‘89 I had an idea of creating a magazine called Trump Style and I presented it to Mr. Trump and he liked that idea a lot. He just questioned me: who is going to pay for it?
Trump style launched, on a quarterly basis. Over the years, they grew closer. Pecker said that he would eventually refer to Trump as “Donald”.
They spoke more frequently as the 2016 campaign got into swing, he said.
Updated
“Are you personally familiar with Donald J Trump?” prosecutor Joshua Steinglass asks David Pecker.
Pecker responds in the affirmative.
How long have you known him? Since the late 1980s.
Could you point him out in the courtroom. Pecker says:
He’s sitting here [wearing], I think it’s a dark blue suit.
Trump appeared to smile.
Who is David Pecker?
David Pecker was a key Trump ally who served as the CEO of American Media Inc (AMI), the publisher of the National Enquirer.
Pecker helped Trump by purchasing the rights to potentially damaging stories and then never publishing them, a practice known as “catch and kill”. In 2015, AMI paid $30,000 to Dino Sajudin, a former doorman at Trump Tower, who was trying to sell a story that Trump had allegedly fathered a child out of wedlock.
In June of 2016, AMI paid Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model, $150,000 to suppress a story about an affair. AMI bought the story with the understanding that Trump would reimburse them, according to the indictment. Michael Cohen would later release a tape of him and Trump discussing repaying Pecker.
In 2016, Dylan Howard, then the editor-in-chief of the National Enquirer, alerted Pecker that Daniels had potentially damaging information about Trump, according to the indictment. Pecker advised Howard to reach out to Cohen, and Cohen subsequently negotiated the deal with Stormy Daniels’ lawyer.
Pecker has been granted immunity in exchange for his testimony and AMI signed a non-prosecution agreement with prosecutors.
Updated
Court resumes with David Pecker taking witness stand
David Pecker, Donald Trump’s longtime ally and former publisher of the National Enquirer, is returning to the witness stand.
The judge reminds him that he’s still under oath.
Pecker first took the stand on Monday and provided brief testimony of his work as a tabloid honcho.
Updated
Donald Trump took the opportunity of a brief court break to go after judge Juan Merchan and the gag order he is under.
The former president wrote in a Truth Social post published at 11am ET:
HIGHLY CONFLICTED, TO PUT IT MILDLY, JUDGE JUAN MERCHAN, HAS TAKEN AWAY MY CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO FREE SPEECH. EVERYBODY IS ALLOWED TO TALK AND LIE ABOUT ME, BUT I AM NOT ALLOWED TO DEFEND MYSELF. THIS IS A KANGAROO COURT, AND THE JUDGE SHOULD RECUSE HIMSELF!
Trump’s lead lawyer Todd Blanche had a rough streak with Judge Merchan earlier when he was desperately trying to defend Trump’s alleged gag order violations.
Prosecutors had pulled 10 instances of Trump railing against witnesses and Merchan shot down Blanche’s explanations for essentially every one.
Merchan asked for caselaw to support Blanche’s point that reposts were not the same as Trump making his own content. Blanche did not have one.
Merchan asked why Trump, in one post, waited until after the appeals court denied Trump’s appeal of the gag order. Blanche struggled to respond.
Merchan then asked what Trump was responding to in some other instances, because the gag order permitted Trump to respond to political attacks. But Blanche did not have examples of what Trump was responding to, other than one post that referenced the possibility of a presidential pardon.
And Merchan clarified to Blanche that Trump’s “reposting” of remarks from Fox News host Jesse Watters was not quite that: Trump used some of Watters’ remark, made his own additions and misleadingly put it all in quote marks, Merchan said. Blanche conceded it was not a repost.
Per the hallway pool, Donald Trump was not chatty as he returned to court following a break, ignoring questions such as “Are you going to keep Truthing?”, “How are your lawyers doing?” and “Does your lawyer have any credibility?”
Updated
Joe Biden is heading to Florida today to deliver remarks railing against the state leadership’s continued march to the right on topics such as abortion rights and educational freedom.
On Capitol Hill, the Senate is debating the foreign aid legislation that belatedly passed the House at the weekend, with voting starting later today.
You can follow coverage as it happens in our blog from Washington, US Politics live with Chris Stein, here, while this blog focuses on the criminal trial of Donald Trump, Biden’s challenger for the White House in the 2024 election.
Updated
The court is taking a short break, after judge Juan Merchan said he would not immediately rule on whether Donald Trump had violated the gag order.
Trump left the courtroom without speaking to reporters, per pool.
Judge tells Trump lawyer he's 'losing all credibility with the court'
Things are not going well for Donald Trump as his lawyer, Todd Blanche, continues to make the claim that re-posting doesn’t violate the gag order.
Judge Merchan said:
Mr Blanche you’re losing all credibility, I have to tell you right now … You’re losing all credibility with the court. Is there any other argument you want to make?
Merchan is reserving decision on the prosecution’s contempt request. This means he is not making a decision right now
Judge Merchan is clearly not buying that this is passive, he asks, “How does it get there, how does it get on to [your] client’s Truth Social account?”
Trump lawyer Todd Blanche replies:
There’s a group of folks that work with President Trump that when they see articles they believe President Trump’s audience should read.
Blanche added that “there’s a mechanism” through which they get posted.
Merchan asked of re-posting:
What is the mechanism?
Blanche said:
I believe you click on it.
Merchan said shortly thereafter:
Someone had to do something.
Updated
Trump lawyer Todd Blanche is saying that seven of the alleged 10 gag order violations are not, because they’re just re-posts.
“It’s not making a mockery of the gag order, your honor – it’s a close call,” Blanche said.
Re-posting an article from a news site or a news program … we don’t believe are a violation of the gag order.
Judge Juan Merchan asked whether there’s any case law on that.
I don’t have any case laws, your honor, it’s just common sense.
Judge shows frustration with slow pace of gag order hearing
Right now, judge Juan Merchan is questioning Trump lawyer Todd Blanche about his contention that Trump was just responding to political attacks, not sliming witnesses in violation of the gag order.
Merchan is getting annoyed over the laborious pace of this process. When Blanche seems to take issue with Merchan trying to move things along, the judge says:
I’m asking you questions, OK. I’m going to decide whether your client is in contempt or not, don’t turn it around.
Merchan then said:
I’m not getting an answer, it’s now almost 10:30, the jurors are going to be here at 11 o’clock. I don’t want to keep them waiting.
“The people [got] to speak as long as they wanted to,” Blanche said.
The people were answering my questions.
Updated
Defense argues Trump social media posts are responses to 'political attacks'
Defense lawyer Todd Blanche is now making his argument against contempt. He said that Trump didn’t violate the gag order. Blanche said:
There is no dispute that President Trump is facing a barrage of political attacks from all sides including from the two witnesses who are referenced in the early posts.
But, Trump is within his rights to comment on such, he said, adding:
That’s the political, he’s allowed to respond to political attacks, your honor.
Updated
Prosecutor Christopher Conroy has just said that prosecutors are not seeking jail time for Trump’s violations of the gag order.
We are not yet seeking incarceratory penalty. Defendant seems to be angling for that … We are asking the court to impose the maximum $1,000 fine for each violation.
Prosecution argues Trump knew parameters of gag order but flouted them anyway
Right now, the prosecutor is going over all of the evidence showing that Trump knew about the order.
Remember: It’s on the prosecution to show that he’s violated the order and convince judge Juan Merchan to find him in contempt.
Prosecutor Christopher Conroy pointed out, for example, that Trump’s complaints about the order – not to mention his litigation against it – prove that he knew the parameters but flouted them anyway.
“He knows about the order, he knows what he’s not allowed to do, and he does it anyway,” Conroy said.
His disobedience of the order is willful, it’s intentional.
Updated
No cameras are allowed inside the courtroom during proceedings, but Donald Trump was photographed before the court was called into session.
Judge hears arguments on whether to hold Trump in contempt of gag order
The prosecution is making its arguments as to whether judge Juan Merchan should hold Trump in contempt.
Prosecutor Christopher Conroy handed Merchan documents with the 10 alleged violations.
“Eight of the violative posts were on the defendant’s Truth Social account,” Conroy said. Two of the posts were on his official campaign website. He argued:
Defendant has violated this order repeatedly and hasn’t stopped.
“The defendant violated the order again – on camera. He did it right here in the hallway outside,” Conroy said, referring to his dig at Cohen yesterday.
We will be filing another order to show cause for this violation later today.
Updated
Donald Trump spoke to the media before heading inside the courtroom. He refused to answer questions about why he did not appeal his gag order, if he would continue to post about witnesses, and if he thinks Michael Cohen is a “sleaze bag”, per pool.
The former president spoke abut the pro-Palestinian demonstrations in several US universities, describing them as a “disgrace to our country” and “all Biden’s fault”.
He said people were wanting to “protest peacefully” at the Manhattan court but “we have more police presence here than anyone’s ever seen … you can’t get near this courthouse”, meanwhile “you have nobody up in a college, where you have very radical people wanting to rip the colleges down, the universities down.”
Donald Trump is seated by himself looking fatigued and with his eyes closed while he waits for his lawyers to confer with the judge and prosecutors before the start of proceedings today.
First on the agenda: whether Trump violated the gag order barring him from assailing witnesses in the case.
Prosecutors allege Trump violated the order multiple times, with Trump seemingly ignoring the gag order altogether on Monday when he directly attacked his former lawyer Michael Cohen.
Updated
Following the contempt hearing, David Pecker is expected to return to the witness stand.
Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer, is the first prosecution witness.
Prosecutors contend that Donald Trump, Michael Cohen, and David Pecker plotted in 2015 to prevent damaging information about the then-GOP presidential hopeful from getting out.
Prosecutors allege that Trump’s transfer of hush-money was illicit, arguing that it was falsely represented in business records as legal services to Cohen.
Trump enters court ahead of gag order hearing
Donald Trump has walked into judge Juan Merchan’s courtroom; he sported a navy suit, white shirt, and red tie, and carried himself with an air of fatigue.
Merchan will soon weigh whether to hold the ex-president in contempt over his apparent repeated violations of a gag order that bars him from publicly trashing witnesses in his hush-money trial.
Prosecutors on 15 April requested a contempt hearing, saying Trump “willfully violated the 1 April [gag] order with three social media posts about known witnesses concerning their participation in this criminal proceeding.”
On 18 April, they said that Trump had committed “seven additional violations of the Court’s Order dated April 1, 2024. The People request that the hearing on April 23, 2024 include these violations as well as the violations outlined in the filing on April 15, 2024.”
It also appears that Trump might have violated the gag order yet again on Monday at court, by railing against Michael Cohen – his onetime attorney-turned-key prosecution witness. Trump told reporters:
When are they going to look at all the lies that Cohen did in the last trial. He got caught lying. Pure lying. And when are they going to look at that.
If found in contempt, the possible penalties against Trump include potential warnings, fines, or in the extreme, jail.
Updated
Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche on Monday defended Trump’s attempt to address Stormy Daniels’s “sinister” allegations, calling it an attempt to try to “embarrass President Trump, to embarrass his family, because as the people alluded to at that time, there were all kinds of salacious allegations going around about President Trump, and it was damaging to him and it was damaging to his family”.
You will hear during this trial President Trump fought back – like he always does – like he’s entitled to do to protect his family, his reputation, and his brand – that is not a crime.
He attacked Michael Cohen, alleging he wanted a job in the Trump administration but did not get one, and saying “he’s obsessed with President Trump, even to this day” to the extent of having multiple podcasts over Trump and waxing enthusiastic about the possibility of his former boss’ conviction. Cohen, he noted, was found to have lied under oath, further undermining his reliability.
As for Daniels, he dismissed her role in the trial as immaterial:
It doesn’t matter. What I mean by that is, I expect you will learn that Ms Daniels doesn’t have any idea. She doesn’t know anything about the charge, 34 counts in this case. She has no idea what Michael Cohen wrote on the invoice … her testimony, while salacious, does not matter.
Trump 'a person just like you and me', argued defense in opening statements
In the defense’s opening statements, Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche said:
President Trump is innocent. President Trump did not commit any crimes. The Manhattan district attorney should never have brought this case.
Blanche made an effort to humanize Trump, while also repeatedly calling him “President Trump”.
He’s, in some ways, larger than life. But he’s also here in this courtroom doing what any of us would do – defending himself … He’s also a man, he’s a husband, he’s a father, he’s a person who’s just like you and just like me.
Blanche argued that Trump was unaware about the specifics of the hush-money payments because he left it all to Trump’s former fixer and lawyer, Michael Cohen. Trump had nothing to do with the 34 checks other than to sign them, Blanche said. He added:
There’s nothing wrong with trying to influence an election. It’s called democracy.
Prosecutors, he said, “they put something sinister on this idea, as if it was a crime. You’ll learn: it’s not.”
Updated
The defense then moved on to attacking the key witnesses.
First off, Blanche explained Trump’s actions after he heard the so-called “sinister” allegations of Stormy Daniels. He described these allegations an attempt to try to “embarrass President Trump, to embarrass his family, because as the people alluded to at that time, there were all kinds of salacious allegations going around about President Trump, and it was damaging to him and it was damaging to his family.
“You will hear during this trial President Trump fought back – like he always does – like he’s entitled to do to protect his family, his reputation, and his brand – that is not a crime.”
Blanche then attacked Cohen, who he claimed was peeved for not landing a job in the Trump administration. “He’s obsessed with President Trump, even to this day”, Blanche said, to the extent of having multiple podcasts over Trump and waxing enthusiastic about the possibility of his former boss’ conviction. He then noted that Cohen was found to have lied under oath, further undermining his reliability.
As for Daniels, he dismissed her role in the trial as immaterial: “It doesn’t matter. What I mean by that is, I expect you will learn that Ms Daniels doesn’t have any idea. She doesn’t know anything about the charge, 34 counts in this case. She has no idea what Michael Cohen wrote on the invoice.
“Her testimony, while salacious, does not matter.”
Blanche concluded by emphasizing that catch-and-kills of the kind arranged by Trump, Cohen and Pecker of the National Enquirer are not illegal. “This sort of thing happens regularly, where newspapers [make] decisions about what to publish, where to publish, how to publish,” Blanche said. “It happens with politicians, famous people, wealthy people.”
Then it was the defense’s turn for opening statements.
Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche started by making an effort to humanize Trump, while also repeatedly calling him “President Trump”. “He’s, in some ways, larger than life. But he’s also here in this courtroom doing what any of us would do – defending himself,” Blanche said.
“He’s also a man, he’s a husband, he’s a father, he’s a person who’s just like you and just like me.”
Leaving aside whether Donald Trump is anything like anyone else at all, Blanche then moved on to claiming Trump was unaware about the specifics of the hush-money payments because he left it all to Cohen.
In a moment that caused some guffaws in the Guardian newsroom, Blanche said Trump had nothing to do with the 34 checks other than to sign them.
He added: “There’s nothing wrong with trying to influence an election. It’s called democracy.” Prosecutors, he said, “they put something sinister on this idea, as if it was a crime. You’ll learn: it’s not.”
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One amusing detail from yesterday – Colangelo using Trump’s famous cheapness as evidence of motive.
The prosecutor noted that even though Cohen paid off Daniels to the tune of $130,000, he was ultimately repaid $420,000. Colangelo alleged that Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg met with Cohen to discuss the repayment, and added $50,000 to the tab for “tech services” – then double that amount “to account for taxes”.
The fact Trump overpaid, Colangelo said, shows he knew the payoff was wrong.
Donald Trump was a very frugal businessman. He believed in pinching pennies … He believed in negotiating every bill.
… Donald Trump’s willingness to [overpay] here shows just how important it was to hide the true nature of Cohen’s [payment] to Ms Daniels and the overall election conspiracy they had launched in August of 2015.
Hush money was ‘election fraud pure and simple’, argued prosecutors during opening statements
In his opening statements, the prosecutor Matthew Colangelo told an entertaining and damning tale.
In it, a presidential candidate tried criminally to cover up an alleged affair with an adult film star to keep damaging information away from the American public weeks before the 2016 election.
Specifically, Colangelo said, Trump’s campaign was terrified after the release of the Access Hollywood tape, which revealed Trump on a hot mic bragging that he could sexually assault women because he was famous. His campaign spun that story as “locker room talk”, but should US voters hear about an affair with a porn star (and who said Trump’s behavior in the bedroom was unpleasant), that wouldn’t be “talk” – it would be action.
Colangelo said the effort to manipulate media began from the beginning of the campaign. He said Trump invited his friend and the former publisher of the National Enquirer, Pecker, to a meeting at Trump Tower in summer 2015. Trump had recently thrown his hat into the ring for the 2016 Republican nomination, and Colangelo said Trump, his former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen and Pecker hatched a plan to keep damaging information about Trump out of the press.
According to the prosecution, Pecker agreed to run damaging information in the National Enquirer about opponents – including an item claiming, falsely, that Senator Ted Cruz had family connections to the JFK assassination.
Pecker would also buy up negative stories for the express purpose of preventing them from being published – a “catch-and-kill” campaign that Colangelo said was geared towards helping Trump’s 2016 election campaign.
He mentioned an earlier payment to Karen McDougal, the Playboy model who claimed to have had an affair with Trump. Colangelo said:
Pecker will also testify that $150,000 was way more than AMI would normally pay for this kind of story, but he discussed it with Donald Trump and he discussed it with Michael Cohen, and he agreed on the deal with the understanding what Trump would find a way to pay AMI back … The company coordinated directly with the candidate.
Today, we’ll learn more.
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Judge to hold hearing over gag order
First off today, before we get to Pecker in the witness box, judge Merchan is likely to address whether Trump violated a court-imposed gag order with a series of social media posts about witnesses.
Prosecutors have accused Trump of violating the order 10 times since the start of the trial, and last week filed a motion to hold the former president in contempt of court, and to fine him $1,000 per violation.
Merchan subjected Trump to a gag order before the trial began, covering prosecutors (but not the Manhattan district attorney, Bragg), witnesses, court employees, jurors and their families. Before the trial, Merchan then extended the gag order to cover his own family and Bragg’s family, after Trump posted about Merchan’s daughter, who worked for a company that helped Democratic candidates with digital campaigns.
Trump remains free to criticize Merchan himself, though doing so would be unlikely to win any favors from the judge, who will decide Trump’s sentence should the jury find him guilty.
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First witness David Pecker to return to the stand in Trump hush-money trial
It was a day full of salacious details and outrageous claims yesterday as Donald Trump appeared in a Manhattan courtroom for opening statements in his hush-money trial – the first ever criminal trial of a former US president.
A 12-person jury in the case of the People of the State of New York versus Donald Trump heard prosecutors and defense lawyers give their side of events.
The prosecution said Trump “orchestrated a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election” in his efforts to cover up an alleged affair with the adult film star Stormy Daniels, calling it “election fraud – pure and simple”.
The defense countered that there was no crime committed because paying hush money is not illegal and neither is trying to influence the outcome of an election – “It’s called democracy.” Obviously that’s not quite what the prosecution are claiming, but we now have an early sense of how the two sides want to frame the story.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up the alleged affair Daniels just weeks before the election.
The case, brought by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, is the first of four criminal cases against the presumptive Republican nominee to reach trial. It hinges on a $130,000 payment that Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, made to Daniels to keep her story under wraps. Bragg contends that Trump masked the true nature of the payment in business records, by describing repayments to Cohen as lawful legal expenses.
The prosecution claims the fact he paid the money to influence the election makes it a campaign expense, and by lying about it he violated federal campaign law – causing the fraud to rise from a misdemeanour to a felony.
Court is scheduled to begin at 9.30am ET, and the jury will return at 11am, with the first witness – David Pecker of the National Enquirer, a man at the heart of the alleged crimes – expected to return to the stand after a very brief appearance yesterday.
We’re at the courthouse again today. Stay with us.
Trump’s criminal hush-money trial: what to know
A guide to Trump’s hush-money trial – so far
The jurors: who is on the Trump trial jury?
The key arguments prosecutors will use against Trump
From Michael Cohen to Stormy Daniels: the key players
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