Donald Trump’s longtime lawyer Michael Cohen returned to the witness stand Tuesday for testimony about the payments he said he received from the former president in return for hush money paid to adult film actor Stormy Daniels in the closing days of the 2016 campaign.
Prosecutors allege that Trump falsified business records relating to those payments by classifying them as legal services pursuant to a retainer agreement. Cohen testified Monday in New York City that no such retainer agreement existed.
He said Tuesday that Trump had told him to work out how he would be reimbursed with Allen Weisselberg, then the chief financial officer of the Trump Organization. He said Trump reiterated that position when he met with Cohen in the Oval Office in 2017. “Make sure you deal with Allen,” Cohen quoted him as saying.
Cohen said that soon after he started receiving monthly $35,000 checks from Trump after he sent an invoice for “legal services rendered.” Prosecutor Susan Hoffinger asked if he’d performed any legal services. “No, ma’am,” Cohen answered.
“Was this invoice a false record?” she asked. “Yes, ma’am,” he replied.
Follow live updates on the Trump hush money trial
Cohen is a pivotal witness in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against Trump. He told the jury during his first full day on the stand that Trump directly authorized him to pay Daniels the $130,000 and that Trump was involved in efforts to quash two other salacious stories that he feared could have damaged his candidacy.
“I was following his directions,” Cohen testified.
Trump, meanwhile, had some high profile Republican supporters slated to attend Tuesday’s proceedings, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, Reps. Byron Donalds and Cory Mills of Florida, and former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. Ramaswamy and Burgum are considered potential vice presidential contenders for Trump.
Trump’s son Eric Trump and his wife, Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump, were in attendance as well.
Cohen is the only witness to directly tie Trump to the falsifying business records scheme, and Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche is expected to try to paint him as a serial liar when he begins cross-examining him as early as Tuesday.
Blanche told jurors in his opening statement that Cohen “cannot be trusted.”
“He’s a convicted felon. And he also is a convicted perjurer. He is an admitted liar,” Blanche said, referring in part to Cohen’s 2018 guilty plea to making false statements to Congress about a proposed project to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. Prosecutors said he’d lied to minimize Trump’s ties to Russia, which Congress and federal investigators were scrutinizing at the time.
Cohen also pleaded guilty to a number of other criminal charges, including tax fraud, and he was sentenced to three years in prison.
Cohen testified Monday that Daniels’ claims of having had a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006 were extremely problematic because she began shopping her story after Trump’s campaign was already reeling from a scandal — the unearthing of the 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape, in which Trump is heard saying he can grope women without their consent.
Asked what kind of impact Daniels’ story could have had on Trump’s campaign at that point, Cohen said, “Catastrophic.”
Trump has denied having had a sexual encounter with Daniels, who testified in great detail about her account last week.
Cohen, who started working for Trump in 2007, said that he fronted the money to pay Daniels through a shell company and that Trump had assured him he would pay him back.
Cohen said the particulars of the repayment were arranged by Weisselberg. The deal called for Cohen to be repaid the $130,000 and $50,000 more he’d previously laid out for Trump involving a tech company in payments that were “grossed up” — doubled — to cover Cohen’s taxes. The money, which included a $60,000 bonus, was then paid out in monthly $35,000 installments that were listed as being for legal services rendered under a retainer agreement.
Cohen testified that there was no retainer agreement and that Trump approved the deal in a meeting with him and Weisselberg.
Weisselberg won’t be testifying — he’s in jail after having pleaded guilty to perjury charges related to his testimony in last year’s civil fraud case against Trump and his company.
It’s unclear whether Trump, the only other person who could directly rebut Cohen’s claims, will testify.
Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records and has pleaded not guilty.
Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, had a number of prominent supporters in court Monday, including Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., and Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, R-N.Y.
Prosecutors said in court Friday they anticipate wrapping up their case this week.
