Trump’s former lawyer spoke about buying the silence of a porn actress

A key prosecution witness, Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen, testified Monday at Donald Trump’s trial on charges of illegally spending campaign funds.

Prosecutors allege that Cohen played a major role in an attempt to buy the silence of porn actress Stormy Daniels, who claimed she had intimate contact with Donald Trump and threatened to make public statements about it shortly before the 2016 presidential election. Speaking in court, Michael Cohen said that he acted on Trump’s direct orders by paying Stormy Daniels $130,000 from his own funds. “Do it,” is how Donald Trump formulated the task, according to Cohen. Trump was allegedly extremely concerned about the possible consequences of this information. “This is a disaster, a complete disaster. Women are going to hate me,” he told Cohen. Two weeks before the election, Cohen, according to him, reported to Trump on the completion of the task. Trump’s former lawyer also said that the money was not immediately reimbursed to him and he had to contact Trump with a complaint, after which Trump’s company CFO Allen Weisselberg explained that the money would be paid to him in installments as payment for legal services provided to the Trump campaign .

Cohen said at the trial that Trump asked him to prevent the press from appearing in an interview with former fashion model Karen McDougal, who allegedly had a past intimate relationship with Trump and a doorman at one of his houses, who threatened to leak information to the press about Trump’s illegitimate child. information that turned out to be fake. At the trial, a recording of a telephone conversation between Cohen and Trump was presented, during which they discussed how much Karen McDougal’s silence would cost.

The prosecutor’s goal is to prove to the jury that Trump, by buying Daniels’ silence, was trying to illegally influence the outcome of the election, which is a criminal offense under New York law. According to the defense, Trump was trying to protect his own reputation and that of his family. Donald Trump insists he was intimate with neither Stormy Daniels nor Karen McDougal.

Michael Cohen is expected to testify in court over several days.