Stormy Daniels lawyer thought Michael Cohen ‘was going to kill himself’ when left out of Trump White House

The attorney who negotiated Stormy Daniels’ $130,000 payment from Michael Cohen thought Donald Trump’s then-attorney was going to “kill himself” when he learned he was left out of a job in Washington DC after the 2016 election.

In his second day of testimony in the former president’s hush money trial in Manhattan on Thursday, Keith Davidson said Cohen was distraught by mid-December 2016.

“I thought he was going to kill himself,” Mr Davidson said.

Earlier, he recalled Cohen telling him: “Jesus Christ, can you believe I’m not going to Washington?”

“I’ve saved that guy’s ass so many times you don’t even know,” Mr Davidson recalled Cohen saying during his testimony. “That guy’s not even paying the $130,000 back.”

Text messages and emails shown in court between Mr Davidson and Cohen through 2016 and into the first two years of the Trump administration detailed negotiations that would keep the adult film star’s story of an alleged affair with Mr Trump out of the press during his campaign.

That transaction is at the centre of the criminal case against the former president, who is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records for allegedly reimbursing Cohen and labelling the payments as legal expenses.

In January 2018, two days before The Wall Street Journal published details of the so-called hush money scheme, Cohen sent a message to Mr Davidson to “write a strong denial.”

Asked by Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Joshua Steinglass what Cohen meant by “denial,” Mr Davidson said “everything.”

“Including the sexual encounter with Donald Trump?” Mr Steinglass asked.

“Yes,” Mr Davidson said.

That statement – which Mr Trump recently shared on his Truth Social as supposed evidence intended to exonerate him of wrongdoing in this case – denied allegations of a “sexual and/or romantic affair” and stateed that her “involvement with Donald Trump was limited to a few public appearances and nothing more.” The hush money payments “are completely false,” the statement said.

Mr Davidson, who wrote the statement, said the statement was still “technically true.”

“I think that this is a tactic that is oftentimes used in the oftentimes cat and mouse interactions between publicists, attorneys and the press, and an extremely strict reading of this denial would technically be true,” he testified on Thursday.

“I don’t think anyone had ever alleged that any interaction between she and Donald Trump is romantic,” he said.

As for the “sexual” part of that statement, that falls under the “and/or,” he said.

A subsequent statement from 30 January 2018 – which Mr Davidson also claimed was “technically true” – said that Ms Daniels is “not denying the affair because I was paid ‘hush money’ as has been reported in overseas owned tabloids” but because “it never happened.”

“I don’t think anyone had ever alleged there was a relationship,” Mr Davidson said in his testimony. “I believe a relationship is an ongoing interaction.”

This is a developing story