By Jack Queen, Luc Cohen and Andy Sullivan
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Prosecutors in Donald TrumpMore witnesses are expected to be called Tuesday during the New York criminal trial as they develop their argument that he was responsible for illegally concealing a hush money payment to a star porn in the run-up to the 2016 elections.
Prosecutors showed that the former president’s signature was on the payments at the heart of the case. Over the next two weeks, they aim to demonstrate that Trump, now running for president again, was responsible for an illegal cover-up.
On Monday, jurors saw the 34 business records that prosecutors say were falsified by Trump to hide the then-attorney’s reimbursement. Michael Cohenwho paid $130,000 to porn star Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about a 2006 sexual encounter she says she had with Trump.
The first former US president to face a criminal trial, Trump has pleaded not guilty and denies ever having sex with Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.
A former Trump staffer said Trump’s top finance official told him the reimbursements to Cohen were for expenses incurred during the campaign. That could counter the argument made by Trump’s lawyers that the payments were for legal work.
However, neither that employee nor another who testified Monday was able to say whether Trump himself ordered the falsification of the paper trail to hide the payments made to Cohen — a hole that prosecutors will try to fill with additional testimonies.
Jurors have yet to hear from Cohen or Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.
They have yet to hear from Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model who was paid $150,000 during the campaign by the National Enquirer for her story of an alleged affair with Trump in 2006 and 2007.
The tabloid’s former editor, David Pecker, said the paper never published McDougal’s account, due to a “catch and kill” deal with Trump to bury articles that might have harmed his candidacy for the 2016 presidential election.
Pecker was the target of a “swatting” incident, intended to trigger a potentially dangerous response from law enforcement, the same day he took the witness stand, according to police reports consulted by Reuters.
Trump claims the lawsuit is a politically motivated attempt to undermine his campaign to win back the White House from Democratic President Joe Biden in the upcoming Nov. 5 election.
Judge Juan Merchan fined Trump a total of $10,000 and warned him he could be jailed for violating a silence order that prohibits him from making public statements about jurors, witnesses and members from the prosecutors’ family or from the judge himself if he was intended to interfere with the case.
The case is widely seen as less consequential than three other criminal charges Trump faces, but it is the only one that is certain to go to trial before the election.
The other cases accuse Trump of trying to overturn his 2020 presidential defeat and mishandling classified documents after leaving office. Trump pleaded no…
