by On the docket: Stormy Daniels’ lawyer details his negotiations with Trump’s fixer
Donald Trump’s trial began moving again on Tuesday with testimony from the lawyer who represented him Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal in their hush-money negotiations.
Keith Davidson he testified (and supported by contemporaneous text messages and emails) about how the former president’s staff negotiated with him to keep the women’s claims of having affairs with Trump quiet.
Davidson said he helped McDougal reach an agreement with American Media Inc (AMI), the parent company of the National Enquirer, to buy the rights to McDougal’s story to keep her quiet.
He added that he first met Daniels in 2011, when her agent asked him to speak to the suitor and Trump’s attorney. Michael Cohen about a blog post alleging the affair. Cohen was furious with Daniels for leaking the story; Davidson suggested that Cohen ask the blog to take down the post, which it did.
Five years later, with Trump’s infamous “catch them by the butt” on the Access Hollywood tape threatening to derail his presidential aspirations in the final weeks of the 2016 campaign, Daniels’ story was suddenly worth a lot. Her agent brought Davidson back in to negotiate a deal to buy him. AMI had no part in it, so he started dealing directly with Cohen.
Davidson said it was clear from the beginning that Cohen was negotiating on Trump’s behalf.
“Every time I spoke to Michael Cohen, he continued his close relationship with Donald Trump,” Davidson said. “I don’t know if it was ever explicitly said: ‘I’m negotiating this matter on behalf of Donald Trump,’ but it was part of his identity – and he would let you know every chance he could that he was working for him. Donald Trump.”
Davidson said he never thought the money for Daniels was going to come from Cohen himself, saying he hoped the money would come “from Donald Trump or some corporate affiliation of his.”
Davidson said he and Cohen went to great lengths to ensure Trump’s name did not appear in the cash agreement to pay Daniels $130,000. They agreed to have Trump and Daniels falsely billed as “Peggy Peterson” and “David Dennison” in the settlement document. The reasoning, he said, was that Daniels was the plaintiff, hence the P’s, and Trump was the defendant, hence the D’s.
The two sides reached an agreement in mid-October 2016 to pay Daniels $130,000.
But the money was not paid. Davidson testified that it appeared that Trump was “trying to kick the can down the road” until after the election, when the situation would not affect his presidential prospects. Davidson sent Cohen an email on October 17 warning him that the deal was off if the money wasn’t made available by the end of business that day, but Cohen continued to make excuses as to why they couldn’t. pay off Finally, Davidson told Cohen that he was done negotiating, and would no longer act as Daniels’ mediator.
At that point, he was the editor of the National Enquirer Dylan Howardwho stayed in touch with Davidson, text that the payments had not gone through “all because Trump is tight” – which Davidson clarified meant “frugal”.
Before Davidson took the stand, the day began with more testimony from Cohen’s veteran banker, who testified that Cohen opened a separate account to transfer the $130,000 shortly before the election. The next witness, as exciting as you can imagine, was a C-span executive who was there to introduce videos of Trump on the campaign trail in mid-October 2016, weeks before the election (and at the same time Cohen in negotiations to buy Daniels’ silence) denying claims from multiple women that he sexually assaulted them. Those women came forward after the Access Hollywood tape.
A full summary of the day can be read here. The trial will resume on Thursday.
Judge holds Trump in contempt (and warns him of jail time)
Before the trial resumed on Tuesday morning, Judge Juan Merchan Trump was fined $9,000 for violating a ban on publicly attacking others involved in his trial and warned he could end up behind bars if he kept it up.
Merchan ruled that Trump violated the gag order barring him from going after witnesses or jurors in his trial on nine separate occasions (out of the ten times prosecutors pointed out), ordering him to post the nine was deleted from his Fürinne social media account, and he was fined the maximum amount allowed by law for each case.
As the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell notes, Trump could be subject to additional punishment as early as Thursday, when Merchan is scheduled to hear arguments that Trump repeatedly violated the gag order since prosecutors Initial list of ten infractions.
Merchan wrote in the order that New York law did not allow him to “impose an appropriate penalty” because the $1,000 statutory cap would not achieve “the desired result” for wealthy violators of the fine.
“Defendant is hereby warned that the Court will not tolerate continued willful violations of its lawful orders and if necessary and appropriate under the circumstances, will impose a prison sentence,” Merchan wrote, warning of prison time.
The Trump campaign moved quickly to capitalize. Even before they took down the Truth Social posts the judge ordered them to take down, the campaign sent out a fundraising email. “They Want to Start Me! They think they can bleed me and shut me down, but I will never stop fighting for you,” the email reads, before including a link to donate.
It wasn’t all bad news for Trump, though. He had previously requested a one-day trial break on Friday, May 17, so he could attend his son Barron’s high school graduation. Merchan granted that request on Tuesday morning.
