Before he launched his 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump braced Michael Cohen for the likelihood of damaging stories about his relationships with women that could derail his bid for the White House, according to testimony from the former attorney.
“You know, that when this comes out – meaning, the announcement – just be prepared there’s gonna be a lot of women coming forward,” Cohen said from the witness stand in the former president’s hush money trial on Monday, remembering what his former boss told him in 2015.
Mr Trump wanted to rely on the “power” of tabloid giant National Enquirer and its placement in “supermarkets and bodegas” to place “positive stories” about him and “negative” ones about his rivals, according to Cohen.
During a meeting at Trump Tower in August 2015, two months after the launch of his campaign. Mr Trump met with Cohen and tabloid publisher David Pecker, who previously testified that he vowed to be the “eyes and ears” of the campaign.
“What he said was that he could keep an eye out for anything negative about Mr Trump and that he would be able to help us know in advance about what was coming out for us to stop it from coming out,” according to Cohen.
The resulting “catch and kill” scheme helped bury a bogus story about an alleged love child with a Trump Tower maid as well a story from a former Playboy model who alleged a months-long affair with Mr Trump years earlier.
Cohen is among the final witnesses in the former president’s historic criminal trial, where is accused of covering up hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels as legal expenses.
According to prosecutors, those checks to Cohen – who bought the rights to Ms Daniels’s story about having sex with Mr Trump for $130,000 – paid off his effort to suppress politically compromising stories in the critical weeks before the 2016 election.
Mr Trump faces 34 counts of falsifying business records and has pleaded not guilty.
Cohen had previously reunited with his former boss in a courtroom down the street from the criminal courthouse in downtown Manhattan.
Last year, he served as a key witness in the former president’s civil fraud trial, where Mr Trump glared from the defense table and fumed from the hallway and on social media as Cohen compared him to a “mob boss” who instructed him to falsely inflate his net worth and assets.
In Mr Trump’s criminal trial, Cohen is expected to connect the dots in the prosecution’s narrative: it was Cohen who negotiated a contract for Ms Daniels’ silence, it was Cohen who sent her $130,000, and it was Cohen who sent invoices to Mr Trump, all at his direction.
It was Cohen’s bombshell testimony to Congress that outlined Mr Trump’s alleged fraud, inspiring several criminal and civil investigations targeting the former president. In 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to federal campaign finance violations and tax charges that included the “catch and kill” scheme at the center of the Manhattan case.
In the years after their fallout, Cohen went to jail, Mr Trump ran for re-election, lost, and was criminally indicted four times in four separate jurisdictions, with a mountain of litigation threatening his business and 2024 campaign.
Mr Trump’s attorneys are expected to unleash a furious cross examination when they take on Cohen, a frequent subject of Mr Trump’s witness-menacing gag order violations.
Last week, after threatening Mr Trump with jail for any future gag order violations, New York Justice Juan Merchan also told prosecutors to keep a lid on Cohen, who uses his social media platforms and podcasts to attack his old boss, now desperate to bury the credibility of an old ally who could now get him convicted.
This is a developing story