Donald Trump worried revelations of an extramarital encounter with a porn actor would be a “disaster” for his first White House bid, former fixer Michael Cohen has testified, bolstering Manhattan prosecutors’ claims that “hush money” payments were used to influence the 2016 US election.
Mr Cohen (57) has in recent years transformed from a Trump loyalist to one of the former president’s most bitter opponents, and is a crucial witness in the trial against his former boss. He used $130,000 of his own money to buy the silence of Stormy Daniels, a porn actor who alleged a sexual affair with Mr Trump. The recording of the reimbursements for those payments are at the heart of the criminal charges brought against the former president.
Upon hearing that Ms Daniels was threatening to go public about an alleged tryst, Mr Trump said “women are going to hate me”, Mr Cohen recalled during his testimony in the criminal trial on Monday. He said his then-employer declared: “This is going to be a disaster for the campaign.”
Mr Trump, then the Republican candidate for president, was particularly concerned that he was “polling very poorly with women”, Mr Cohen added, following the publication of the notorious Access Hollywood tape in which the reality television star had bragged about grabbing women by their genitals.
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Mr Trump ordered Mr Cohen to suppress Ms Daniels’s story and “just get past the election”, his former personal attorney testified. Mr Cohen said Mr Trump went on to tell him: “If I win it will have no relevance ... and if I lose I don’t really care.”
Asked if Mr Trump was concerned the revelations would upset his wife, Mr Cohen said: “He wasn’t thinking about Melania, this was all about the campaign.”
The Manhattan jury listened closely as Mr Cohen explained that he was prepared for “a lot of women coming forward” with allegations once Mr Trump announced his candidacy for president in 2015, and set about trying to prevent their stories from being made public.
Mr Cohen described how, with the help of tabloid publisher David Pecker, he orchestrated payments to a doorman who was looking to sell a story about Mr Trump having fathered an illegitimate child, and to Playboy model Karen McDougal, who alleged an extramarital affair with Mr Trump.
He said Mr Trump was “grateful” for the arrangement with Ms McDougal.
Striking a sober tone that contrasted sharply with his vicious social media posts and TikTok videos targeting Mr Trump, Mr Cohen kept his answers short and precise, rarely meeting the gaze of his former employer, who was sitting a few feet away at the defence table, his eyes occasionally closed.
Mr Cohen, who had become notorious for intimidating journalists on behalf of Mr Trump, also admitted to having frequently lied for the man he called “boss”, and to having bullied his detractors. “The only thing that was on my mind was to accomplish the task, to make him happy,” he explained.
Once one of Mr Trump’s closest aides, Mr Cohen left the former president’s orbit in 2018, and severed ties with his boss after pleading guilty to a litany of federal charges including tax evasion and campaign finance violations. Mr Cohen served prison time for those charges and was also found to have perjured himself in front of Congress, and was ultimately disbarred as a lawyer.
He has since publicly traded barbs with Mr Trump, calling his former employer a “mobster” and consistently warning against his re-election. Mr Cohen has in turn been labelled a “sleaze bag” and a “serial liar” by Mr Trump.
Given Mr Cohen’s chequered past, prosecutors waited until near the end of their case before turning to the former lawyer to corroborate testimony from a dozen other witnesses, including Mr Pecker and former Trump aide Hope Hicks. Last week, Ms Daniels herself provided hours of embarrassing evidence about her alleged sexual encounter with Mr Trump.
After Mr Cohen, the Manhattan district attorney’s office will probably call one final witness before resting its case. Mr Trump had indicated that he would then testify in his own defence, but has appeared to waver from that commitment in recent comments to the press.
Mr Trump – fresh from a weekend campaign rally in Wildwood, New Jersey – was joined in court by a coterie of Republican allies, including senators JD Vance and Tommy Tuberville, Staten Island congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis and attorneys general from Iowa and Alabama.
On his way into court on Monday, Mr Trump again called the case a “political witch hunt” and touted polls that show him leading in swing states. “This is a Biden prosecution,” he added. “It’s election interference at a level that nobody in this country has ever seen before.” – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2024