NEW YORK — Former President Donald Trump has a message for the Manhattan grand jury seeking his testimony in a porn star hush money probe: Don’t hold your breath.
Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina said on Monday that the former president is “an extortion victim,” and has no plans to cooperate with the Manhattan DA’s investigation into an alleged preelection hush money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels.
“He’s not going to testify,” Tacopina said. “Ninety-nine percent of targets in grand jury proceedings choose not to. He’s not going to participate in the proceeding that me and most election law experts think is without total merit.”
Tacopina’s comments came on the same day longtime fixer Michael Cohen testified for nearly three hours about his role in issuing the now-notorious $130,000 payment to Daniels in October 2016 to buy her silence about an alleged sexual tryst with Trump at a Lake Tahoe golf tournament in 2006.
The payment, which has for years been public knowledge, made Cohen a felon and ultimately led to his disbarment.
The current grand jury hearing evidence was impaneled in January. Cohen did not testify before a previous grand jury hearing evidence against Trump that expired last spring or one that heard evidence against the Trump Organization and its finance chief Allen Weisselberg.
In his 2018 federal conviction for campaign finance violations, bank fraud, and tax evasion, Cohen pointed the finger directly at his longtime boss — referring to him as “Individual 1.″ The former lawyer said that Trump told him to make the hush money payments “for the principal purpose of influencing” the election outcome.
He said a secondary hush deal with Playboy model Karen McDougal was coordinated with the Trump-boosting tabloid National Enquirer.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has been investigating whether Trump falsified business records in connection with the payment, which prosecutors allege was to keep her from talking about a long-denied affair.
Cohen said Trump and his real estate business paid him back for the hush money with reimbursement checks with interest spread out over several months. Sources connected to Bragg’s probe believe the DA is considering charging Trump with falsifying business records for classifying the payback as legal fees and concealing those payments to hide another crime — illegally making the payments for political reasons.
Cohen’s lawyer, Lanny Davis, said Cohen was “completely responsive.”
“This is about accountability and this is about facts and the truth,” Davis said.
It’s unclear whether prosecutors are probing other areas with the grand jury and considering other potential charges. The yearslong probe launched by Bragg’s predecessor Cyrus Vance has ramped up recently, with prosecutors summoning longtime Trump aides like Hope Hicks and Kellyanne Conway for interviews.
Last week, the DA’s team invited Trump to come in and testify before the grand jury, a source told the New York Daily News, signaling Bragg is close to making a charging decision. In an appearance on “Good Morning America” on Monday, Tacopina said a decision had not yet been made but that Trump had “no plans” to take the DA up on his invitation.
Tacopina described Trump as a victim in the hush money scheme.
“This was a plain extortion, and I don’t know when we’ve decided to start prosecuting extortion victims,” Tacopina said in the interview. “He’s vehemently denied this affair. But he had to pay money because there was going to be an allegation that was going to be publicly embarrassing for him — regardless of the campaign.”
Cohen, who also pleaded guilty to lying to Congress in 2018, did three years in federal custody for his crimes, serving half his sentence at Otisville Correctional Facility and the remainder at his Trump Park Avenue apartment.
Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, who brought the case against him, considered charging Trump but ultimately decided against it fearing political blowback, according to a recent book written by Elie Honig, a former member of the prosecuting team.
Trump has long decried the DA’s probe as a “witch hunt” and has described his former personal lawyer Cohen as a “SleazeBag disbarred Lawyer From Hell.”
———
