Thread by @stewartbishop

Good morning from New York and the criminal trial of Donald Trump over the Manhattan DA's claims that the former president and others falsified business records to conceal hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels, in order to keep her quiet about an affair with Trump.

This was late 2016, the infamous Access Hollywood tape had just dropped, and prosecutors say Trump & co. undermined the integrity of the election by orchestrating the coverup.

Trump's former personal attorney Michael Cohen allegedly paid $130,000 to Daniels, and Trump secretly repaid him under the pretense of legal fees, including at least one check signed by Trump in the White House in 2017.

In order to sustain a felony charge of falsifying business records, prosecutors must prove that Trump did so with an intent to defraud and in furtherance of the commission of another crime or to help conceal such an offense.

Here, the DA is leaning hard on violations of state and federal election laws, although - and this is probably just an academic exercise now on my part - one could plausibly make the case that the other crime(s) was a tax law violation.

According to the government, Trump Org. CFO Allen Weisselberg agreed to structure the repayments in a way so that Michael Cohen could claim the funds as income on his tax returns, as opposed to the repayment of a debt, thus giving rise to a tax crime.

The DA's office successfully prosecuted the Trump Org. for tax fraud, related to under-the-table perks paid to Weisselberg and other executives. Weisselberg pled guilty to tax fraud before the trial and begrudgingly testified for the government.

Weisselberg did time for that rap, and he's currently locked up on Rikers Island again, after pleading guilty to perjury for giving false testimony in the NY AG's civil fraud trial of Trump and others, including the former Trump Org. CFO.

Thus ends my brief oral history of Trump's recent problems in NY state court. He's in the courtroom now, seated at the defense table with his lawyers, prosecutors are here and things are about to get underway.

NY Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan takes the bench and addresses Trump directly about the scope of the gag order that bars him from pillorying witnesses, prosecutors, jurors and court staff, as well as their family members.

Justice Merchan tells Trump that he has an absolute right to testify in his own defense at trial.

“That is a constitutional right that cannot be denied or abrogated in any way,” he says.

"The gag order restricts extrajudicial statements does not prohibit you from testifying in any way, and does not limit what you say," the judge says.

Meaning that the gag order only applies to statements made out of court, it does not apply to what Trump could say on the stand, should he chose to testify.

Trump counsel Todd Blanche is up arguing about the admissibility of some evidence that prosecutors are expected to try and introduce through a summary witness today.

Summary witnesses often have little to do with the case, but are used to introduce a large amount of evidence into the trial, especially in white collar cases.

Justice Merchan punts, says he'll take it up later today.

Meanwhile, minutes before the trial began today, Trump took to Truth Social for his usual commentary about this case.

Back on the stand today is Doug Daus, an IT guy from the DA’s office. He was called to the stand to verify the data he extracted from two of Michael Cohen’s phones.

He's on cross, and Trump counsel Emil Bove has been pressing him on the chain of custody of the devices.

Bove is trying to drive home the point that the data on the phones may have been compromised in some way before Daus performed a full extraction of all the data.

The most consequential part of Daus' testimony yesterday was when the jury heard a recording of a conversation between Cohen and Trump in regard Karen McDougal, a Playboy model who also says she had an extramarital affair with Trump.

The conversation was in connection with the proposed deal to buy the rights to McDougal’s story from National Enquirer published AMI, which had paid McDougal $150,000 in a “catch and kill” deal for her story of an affair with Trump.

COHEN: I’m all over that..I spoke to Allen about it, when it comes time for the financing, which will be

TRUMP: Wait a sec, what financing?

COHEN: Well, I’ll have to pay him something

TRUMP: [UNINTELLIGIBLE] pay with cash...

COHEN: No, no, no, no, no. I got it

TRUMP: check

Said audio: soundcloud.com/user-811579891…

Bove brings up all sorts of things that happened to the phones before Daus took custody of the devices in 2023. Syncs with Cohen’s laptops, other random phone stuff, etc.

“The things I’ve raised this morning raise some questions about how this phone was handled, correct?” Bove asks

“That’s right,” Daus says.

“In many ways, we’re just going to have to take Michael Cohen’s word for it aren’t we?” Bove says.

“That’s correct,” Daus replies.

That's it for Bove. ADA Chris Conroy is back up for redirect.

Conroy asks Daus if he’s seen any evidence of tampering or manipulation with respect to any of the data introduced as evidence yesterday.

“No,” Daus replies.

That's it for Daus.

Sidebar.

Next on the stand is Georgia Longstreet, a paralegal for the Manhattan DA's office.

Longstreet has been compiling public information on Trump for a year and a half, she says, including lots of social media posts.

"Everyday, multiple times a day," Longstreet says.

She says she's look at between 5,000 to 10,000 posts.

Back from a break, Trump counsel Todd Blanche says they have hearsay objections to certain pieces of evidence coming in, but they’ve reached a stipulation with the government on another tranche. Here’s hoping that speeds things up a bit.

The jury is not seeing a video that was posted on Twitter on Oct 8, 2016. It’s Trump addressing the notorious Access Hollywood tape.

Trump is uncharacteristically apologetic.

“Anyone who knows me knows those words don’t reflect who I am,” Trump says. “I said it, I was wrong and I apologize.”

Longstreet's direct wraps up quickly. Trump attorney Todd Blanche is up questioning Longstreet about what other media she's reviewed. He asks her about Michael Cohen's social media and his podcast Mea Culpa.

"You haven't listened to every episode of Mea Culpa have you?" Blanche asks.

"Absolutely not," Longstreet says without missing a beat, to assorted laughter.

Longstreet steps down.

Here we go, former Trump adviser Hope Hicks is taking the stand.

She settles in somewhat warily into the witness chair.

“I’m really nervous,” Hicks says after stumbling over some initial words.

Hicks says she initially worked with Ivanka Trump on her personal brand, before joining the Trump Org. full time in 2014, about four years after she finished college.

Hicks is here pursuant to a subpoena from the Manhattan DA’s office.

She says she hasn’t been in contact with Trump since the summer or fall of 2022.

Hicks says she became director of communications for the Trump Org., and soon after she joined the Trump campaign.

ADA Matthew Colangelo is asking Hicks about her contact with Trump, which was frequent as the Trump campaign got underway and she assumed the role of press secretary.

ADA Matthew Colangelo is asking Hicks about all the central characters in Trump world. Weisselberg, Cohen, Trump’s executive assistant, bodyguard turned White House official Keith Schiller etc.

When asked about what being press secretary for the Trump campaign was like, Hicks laughs a little.

"A lot of incoming," she says.

Hicks said in the early stages of the campaign, the communications team consisted of just her and Trump, who she notes was pretty experienced at engaging with the media.

Hicks confirms that she was frequently in and out of Trump’s office while he was meeting with other people, as well as while Trump was on the phone.

She’s asked about one call between Trump and AMI CEO David Pecker, in which Trump was congratulating Pecker on a National Enquirer article on GOP primary rival and neurosurgeon Ben Carson leaving a sponge in someone’s brain.

Trump called it Pulitzer worthy, Hicks says.

Now Hicks is asked about when she first became aware of the Access Hollywood tape. She said it was in Oct. 2016, when a Washington Post reporter reached out to her for comment on the video. The reporter emailed her a transcript.

Colangelo asks Hicks about her reaction at the time.

“I was concerned, very concerned,” Hicks says. “I was concerned about the contents of the email, I was concerned about the lack of time to respond, I was concerned that we had a transcript and not a tape.”

Hicks soon forwarded the email to a wider group on the Trump campaign.

"One, need to see the tape to be sure, two, deny deny deny," Hicks said in the email.

The group soon convened a meeting in a conference room at Trump Tower. Jared Kushner, Steve Bannon Kellyanne Conway etc.

Trump soon arrived and Hicks said she started to read him part of the transcript.

"He said that doesn't sound like something I would say," Hicks said.

"Obviously it wasn’t helpful...there were a lot of layers to it. It complicated where we were trying to go with the campaign,” Hicks says. “I think there was consensus amongst us all that the tape was damaging, that this was a crisis.”

The conversation soon turned to how the campaign should respond. It was just a matter of hours between when the Post reporter reached out and when the Access Hollywood tape was published, Hicks says.

“This was locker room banter, a private conversation that took place many years ago, Bill Clinton has said worse things to on the golf course, not even close. I apologize if anyone was offended," Trump's initial statement said.

The media response to the tape’s release was intense and non-stop for days, Hicks says.

At the time, “There was a category 4 hurricane...on the East Coast and I don’t think anyone noticed when it made landfall,” Hicks says. "It was all Trump all the time."

Senior GOP officials soon began to denounce Trump’s Access Hollywood remarks, Hicks says. House Speaker Paul Ryan, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, then-former Gov. Mitt Romney all spoke out.

Around that time, Hicks said she asked Michael Cohen to chase down a rumor Hicks had heard about another tape that could be damaging to Trump. Turned out there was no such tape, she says.

One of the presidential debates between Hillary Clinton and Trump happened soon after. One of the first questions to Trump was about the Access Hollywood tape, which again he dismissed as locker room talk, and “words, not actions,” Hicks says.

Rumblings of other damaging information about Trump’s behavior with women were also afoot, Hicks says. The New York Times was asking questions, she says.

Colangelo turns to Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels. Hicks says she learned about McDougal when a WSJ reporter reached out, and had heard about Daniels before, when she was at a celebrity golf tournament that Trump attended.

Hicks said she reached out to Jared Kushner because he was handling more and more campaign operations, and “he had a very good relationship with (WSJ owner) Rupert Murdoch and I was hoping he could buy a little time.”

Kushner told Hicks he couldn't reach Murdoch in time. WSJ published this article on the same day.
wsj.com/articles/natio…

Trump denied it. We're breaking for lunch.

And we're back. Hope Hicks retakes the stand.

ADA Matthew Colangelo resumes his questions about the Wall Street Journal article. Trump denied having an affair with Karen McDougal and said “we have no knowledge of any of this” with respect to the $150,000 deal with AMI in exchange for the rights to her story.

Hicks says she remembers Trump telling her to deny the affair, but she doesn’t recall if the “we have no knowledge” came from Trump. Colangelo presses this point, he’s implying that Hicks testified before the grand jury that it did come directly from Trump.

Hicks doesn’t budge, she says she can’t recall.

On Nov 5, the day after the WSJ article ran, Hicks and Michael Cohen text each other about the article. One of them notes that the story was “getting very little traction” in the rest of the press.

“It was not like the Access Hollywood tape,” Hicks says today.

Nevertheless, Trump was concerned about the article.

“He was concerned about how it could be viewed by his wife. He wanted me to make sure that the newspapers weren’t delivered to the residence that morning,” Hicks says.

Asked if Trump expressed concern about how the article would impact the campaign, Hicks says everything they talked about in those days was about how something was impacting the campaign. Trump was always saying "how's it playing," she says.

Fast forward to the White House, Hicks became communications director. In March of 2018, Karen McDougal sued AMI to be released from the hush money agreement.

Days later, McDougal went on Anderson Cooper for a tell-all interview.

Hicks also resigned soon after and returned to the White House in 2020.

In January 2018, the WSJ published an article about the Stormy Daniels affair. In a later comment to NYT, Michael Cohen claimed that he had paid her the $130,000 on his own and Trump had no knowledge of it.

Hicks recounts a chat with Trump the following month, when he told her that Cohen paid Daniels “out of the kindness of his heart” and was trying to protect Trump from a false allegation.

Colangelo asks Hicks if that’s something that she thinks Cohen might do.

“I’d say that would be out of character for Michael. I didn’t know Michael to be an especially charitable person or a selfless person,” Hicks says.

She said he was the kind of person who seeks credit.

That's it for Hicks' direct. Cross was maybe two minutes in and Hicks broke down in tears.

We're taking a break.

Hicks is back on the stand, composed, but her voice is a little shaky at first. Trump counsel Emil Bove is handling cross.

Hicks is asked about Michael Cohen’s role in Trump’s campaign. She says made statements and media appearances during the campaign, but was focusing on Trump’s business.

“There were times that [Cohen] did things that were frustrating to the campaign staff?” Bove asks.

“Yes,” Hicks says.

“He went rogue?” Bove asks.

“Yes,” Hicks said. “I used to say he liked to call himself a fixer or Mr. Fixit, and it was only because he first broke it.”

Bove is asking about the Trump campaign when the Access Hollywood tape came out. He asks if Hicks had a sense that the scandal was causing Trump stress.

“Yes, he was worried about how this would be viewed at home,” Hicks says.

That's it for Hicks. Bove asked a few more questions about Trump's concern for his kids, how busy it was in the White House in 2017.

He closes with getting Hicks to confirm that she had noting to do with Trump Org. business records at that time.

And that’s it for the trial today, we’re back on Monday morning.