From a Manhattan courtroom, Day 10 of Donald Trump’s criminal election interference hush money trial introduced audio evidence where the jury got to hear Donald Trump himself talk about paying hush money to one of his mistresses weeks before the 2016 election. The trial’s seventh witness, Douglas Daus of the District Attorney’s Office technical unit, took the stand.
- Court opened Thursday with prosecutors alleging Trump violated the gag order four additional times on top of the nine violations identified Tuesday.
- Prosecutors say they are not seeking jail time for Trump for gag order violations–yet.
- Stormy Daniels’ and Karen McDougal’s former lawyer, Keith Davidson, returned to the stand and described Cohen’s efforts to reach him as “frantic” and “pants-on-fire” after the Access Hollywood tape was released.
- Davidson makes it clear no one enjoyed dealing with Michael Cohen.
- Prosecutors played a recording of a phone call, made surreptitiously by Michael Cohen, of Cohen and Trump discussing paying off Davidson’s client, McDougal, with Trump saying, “What do we got to pay for this? One-fifty?”
- After the break and before the jury returns, Trump’s lawyers asked for clarification on whether Trump can repost on social media articles and stories from media outlets that mention witnesses in the case. Merchan says when it doubt, “steer clear.”
- Trump attorneys get Davidson to admit he was once under federal investigation in relation to the Hulk Hogan case. Davidson quickly interjects he was not charged in the case.
- Cohen to Davidson: “After everything I’ve done for the fucking guy, I can’t believe I’m not going to Washington. I’ve save that guy’s ass so many times, you don’t even know.”
- Cross brings up Davidson’s other cases for clients like Hulk Hogan, Charlie Sheen and Lindsay Lohan.
- Many of the questions from Trump’s attorneys attempt to smear Davidson because he’s been involved in seedy NDA cases involving Hollywood celebrities.
- Defense attorneys push that the “David Dennison” signature is missing from the copy of the NDA they have. There appears to be no challenge that the agreement was executed by Trump
- Cross examination completed. Davidson is dismissed.
- Next witness is Douglas Daus, a tech specialist from the DA’s office. He’s providing testimony linking Cohen and others to cell phones/messages/emails to confirm authenticity of communications.
- Daus reports one of Cohen’s cell phones had nearly 40,000 listing in the Contacts app.
- Leaving the courtroom, Trump stated in his periodic blurt to media that because of the gag order, he is unable to testify. That is untrue: the gag order does not preclude him from testifying truthfully.
- Friday’s session will end early at 3:45 p.m. ET on Friday to accommodate a juror’s previously-known schedule conflict.