‘Stop this from getting out’: Star witness Michael Cohen implicates Trump in hush money case (2024)

NEW YORK —Donald Trumpwas intimately involved with all aspects of a scheme to stifle stories about sex that threatened to torpedo his 2016 campaign, his former lawyer said Monday in matter-of-fact testimony that went to the heart of theformer president’s hush money trial.

“Everything required Mr. Trump’s sign-off,” said Michael Cohen, Trump's fixer-turned-foe and the prosecution's star witness in a case now entering its final, pivotal stretch.

In hours of highlyanticipated testimony, Cohen placed Trump at the center of the hush money plot, saying the then-candidate had promised to reimburse the lawyer for the money he fronted and was constantly updated about behind-the-scenes efforts to bury stories feared to be harmful to the campaign.

“Stop this from getting out,” Cohen, the prosecution's star witness, quoted Trump as telling him in reference top*rn actor Stormy Daniels' account of a sexual encounterwith Trump a decade earlier.The then-candidate was especially anxious about how the story would affect his standing with female voters.

A similar episode occurred when Cohen alerted Trump that a Playboy model was alleging that she and Trump had an extramarital affair. “Make sure it doesn’t get released,” Cohen said Trump told him. The woman,Karen McDougal,was paid $150,000 in an arrangement that was made after Trump received a “complete and total update on everything that transpired.”

“What I was doing was at the direction of and benefit of Mr. Trump,” Cohen testified.

Cohenis by far the prosecution's most important witness, and though his testimony lacked the electricity that defined Daniels' turn on the stand, he nonetheless linked Trump directly to the payments and helped illuminate some of the drier evidence such as text messages and phone logs that jurors have seen.

The testimony of a witness with such intimate knowledge of Trump’s activities could heighten the legal exposure of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee if jurors deem him sufficiently credible. But prosecutors’ reliance on a witness with such a checkered past —Cohen pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the payments— also carries sizable risks with a jury and could be a boon to Trump politically as he fundraises off his legal woes and paints the case as the product of a tainted criminal justice system.

The men, once so close that Cohen boasted that he would “take a bullet” for Trump, had no visible interaction inside the courtroom. The calm was a marked contrast from their last courtroom faceoff,when Trump last October walked out of the courtroomafter his lawyer finished questioning Cohen during his civil fraud trial.

This time around, Trump sat at the defense table with his eyes closed for long stretches of testimony as Cohen recounted his decade-long career as a senior Trump Organization executive, doing work that by his own admission sometimes involved lying and bullying others on his boss's behalf.

Jurors had previously heard from others about the tabloid industry practice of “catch-and-kill,” in which rights to a story are purchased so that it can then be quashed. But Cohen's testimony, which continues Tuesday, is crucial to prosecutors because of his direct communication with the then-candidate about embarrassing stories he was scrambling to suppress.

Cohen also matters because the reimbursem*nts he received from a $130,000 hush money payment to Daniels, which prosecutors say was meant to buy her silence in advance of the 2016 election, form the basis of 34 felony counts charging Trump with falsifying business records. Prosecutors say the reimbursem*nts were logged, falsely, as legal expenses to conceal the payments’ true purpose.

Under questioning from a prosecutor,Cohen detailed the steps he took to mask the payments — which he had agreed to front — from his wife and his bank. When he opened a bank account to pay Daniels, an action he said he told Trump he was taking, he said it was for a new limited liability corporation but withheld the actual purpose.

"I’m not sure theywould’ve opened it,” he said, “if it stated: to pay off an adult film star for a non-disclosure agreement.”

Cohen also gave jurors an insider account of his negotiations withDavid Pecker, the then-publisher of the National Enquirer who was such a close Trump ally that Cohen said he told him that his publication maintained a “file drawer or a locked drawer as he described it, where files related to Mr. Trump were located." That effort that took on added urgency following the October 2016 disclosure of an “Access Hollywood” recording in which Trump was heard boasting about grabbing women sexually.

The Daniels payment was finalized several weeks after that revelation, but Monday's testimony also centered on the deal earlier that fall with McDougal.

Cohen testified that he went to Trump immediately after the National Enquirer alerted him to a story about the alleged McDougal affair. “Make sure it doesn’t get released," he says Trump told him.

Trump checked in with Pecker about the matter, asking him how “things were going” with it, Cohen said. Pecker responded: "'We have this under control, and we’ll take care of this,’” Cohen testified.

Cohen also said he was with Trump as Trump spoke to Pecker on a speakerphone in his Trump Tower office.

“David stated it would cost$150,000 to control the story,” Cohen said. He quoted Trump as saying: “No problem, I’ll take care of it," meaning that the payments would be reimbursed.

To lay the foundation that the deals were done with Trump's endorsem*nt, prosecutors elicited testimony from Cohen designed to show Trump as a hands-on manager on whose behalf Cohen said he sometimes lied and bullied others, including reporters.

“When he would task youwith something, he would then say, ‘Keep me informed. Let me know what’s going on,’” Cohen testified. He said that was especially true “if there was a matter that was troubling to him.”

“If he learned of it in another manner, that wouldn’t go over well for you,” Cohen testified.

Defense lawyers have teed up a bruising cross-examination of Cohen, telling jurors during opening statements that he's an “admitted liar” with an “obsession to get President Trump.” Besides portraying him as untrustworthy, they’re also expected to cast him as vindictive, vengeful and agenda-driven.

Prosecutors arehoping to try to blunt those attacks by acknowledging Cohen's past crimes to jurors during opening statements and by relying on other witnesses whose accounts, they hope, will buttress Cohen's testimony. They include alawyer who negotiated the hush money paymentson behalf of Daniels and McDougal, as well as Pecker and Daniels.

Cohen's role as star prosecution witness further cements the disintegration of a mutually beneficial relationship. After Cohen's home and office were raided by the FBI in 2018, Trump showered him with affection on social media, praising him as a “fine person with a wonderful family” and predicting — incorrectly — that Cohen would not "flip."

Months later, Cohen did exactly that, pleading guilty that August to federal campaign-finance charges in which he implicated Trump. By that point, the relationship was irrevocably broken, with Trump posting on the social media platform then known as Twitter: “If anyone is looking for a good lawyer, I would strongly suggest that you don’t retain the services of Michael Cohen!”

Since the men's fallout, Cohen has emerged as a relentless and sometimes crude critic of Trump, appearing as recently as last week in a live TikTok wearing a shirt featuring a figure resembling Trump with his hands cuffed, behind bars. The judge on Friday urged prosecutors to tell him to refrain from making any more statements about the case or Trump.