“So I was sitting with President Trump and he asked me if I was OK. He asked me if I needed money,” Cohen recalled.

“He said, um, ‘Alright. Just make sure you deal with Allen’” — the Trump family’s longtime financial sentry, Allen Weisselberg, currently serving a second stint on Rikers for a perjury conviction — Cohen added.

During his second day on the witness stand, he told the Manhattan Supreme Court jury that the meeting happened on Feb. 8, 2017, not long after Trump took up residency at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Trump’s then-lawyer was still waiting to be paid back for silencing Daniels about claims of an extramarital tryst with Trump 11 days out from the election. Establishing Trump’s knowledge of the hush money reimbursement is crucial for prosecutors to prove their case.

“Did he say anything about anything that would be forthcoming?” prosecutor Susan Hoffinger asked.

“Yes,” Cohen replied. “It would be a check for January and February.”

During over five hours in the witness box on Monday, Trump’s loyal lawyer-turned-chief antagonist said his boss played a direct role in the effort to silence Daniels, former Playboy model Karen McDougal and a Trump Tower doorman about a series of sex scandals, the latter two of whom were paid off by former tabloid publisher David Pecker. Trump has pleaded not guilty and strongly denies the affairs.

Trump’s chief financial officer said he’d be reimbursed for handling the hush-money deal in installments purporting to cover a retainer fee as the president’s personal attorney, Cohen said. He testified Monday and Tuesday that the role was mostly meaningless and that he felt abandoned once Trump left Fifth Ave. for the White House.

“[Trump] approved it. And he also said, ‘This is going to be one heck of a ride in D.C.,’” Cohen said Monday.

Cohen, who went to federal prison for the payoff after pleading guilty to violating campaign finance laws and other crimes in 2018, wanted the remittance in one lump sum, but “Mr. Trump allegedly said, ‘No, it’s better, it’s better to do it over the 12 months.’”

Trump, 77, is accused of repeatedly falsifying New York business records throughout 2017 to disguise the reimbursement to Cohen — classifying it as payment for legal fees — to disguise an underlying scheme to hide damaging information from the voting public.

On Tuesday morning, Hoffinger pulled up each of Cohen’s 11 invoices to display to the court and asked him if they were false or accounted for actual “services rendered.”

“No ma’am,” Cohen answered. “They were for reimbursement.”

Asked how many hours of work he put in throughout 2017 while being compensated monthly in the tens of thousands, Cohen said, “Less than 10.”

Among the evidence the jury will have before them when they begin to deliberate is a bank statement reflecting Cohen’s payoff to Daniels — wired to her attorney, Keith Davidson, through a shell company hastily set up by Cohen in the waning days of the 2016 race. They will also have the invoices and the 11 checks Cohen received bearing Trump’s renowned spiky signature written with a Sharpie.

Last week, Weisselberg’s longtime deputy, ex-Trump Org controller Jeff McConney, identified handwritten notes on the Davidson statement as the penmanship of his former boss. The CFO calculated that Cohen was owed $420,000 — $130,000 for the payment to Daniels and an additional $50,000 Cohen paid a tech company for Trump-related work, then multiplied by two to account for taxes plus a $60,000 bonus.

Cohen revealed Monday that notes on the statement documenting the $50,000 expense were his own.

The jury on Tuesday heard how Cohen and Trump’s feud came to pass following Cohen’s 2018 guilty plea, with the former fixer saying he last spoke with his longtime boss sitting feet away at the defense table after his office and hotel room were raided by the feds, which Cohen called the “worst day of my life.”

“He said to me, ‘Don’t worry, I’m the president of the United States, there’s nothing here — everything’s going to be OK. Stay tough. You’re going to be OK,’” Cohen recalled, adding that others told him he was “loved” by Trump.

In the immediate aftermath, Cohen — who has since sought to rebrand himself as a liberal resistance hero — said he felt “reassured, because I had the president of the United States protecting me.”

Trump’s eyes were closed for long periods of Tuesday’s testimony, leaving spectators wondering if he was dozing off, and he and Cohen barely looked in each other’s direction.

Trump’s court appearances have drawn high-profile supporters, including former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, Eric Trump, and his wife, Lara, on Tuesday. House Speaker Mike Johnson lamented the trial outside the lower Manhattan courthouse without stepping foot inside the courtroom.

Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, Florida Republicans Byron Donalds and Cory Mills, and Fox News host Laura Ingraham were also among those who came to the courthouse. Ingraham received a talking-to from a court officer for taking out her phone.

Trump lawyer Todd Blanche came bucking out of the gate on cross-examination later Tuesday, almost instantly earning a sustained objection when he asked Cohen if he’d recently referred to him on TikTok as “a crying little s–t.”

“Sounds like something I would say,” Cohen replied.

Blanche also asked Cohen about schoolyard taunts he’d made in public about Trump, ranging from “dictator douchebag” and “boorish cartoon misogynist” to “Cheeto-dusted cartoon villain.” Cohen didn’t deny any of them.

Blanche attacked his credibility from all sides by portraying him as driven by hatred and financial greed. He highlighted Cohen’s countless public statements calling for Trump to be imprisoned, his propensity to wax lyrical on the phone with reporters, and the motivations behind his extensive cooperation in prosecutors’ Trump probe leading to the case on trial.

Cohen, known for having a notoriously short fuse, has yet to lose his cool on the stand and gave mild, one-word replies to the grilling.

The defense has claimed that Cohen’s payment to Daniels was an example of him going rogue and showed an unhealthy obsession with his boss. Cohen on Tuesday rejected that framing.

Asked about past praise Cohen gave of Trump — calling him “a good man” in 2015 and saying that he “cares deeply about this country” and “he’s a man who tells it straight” — Cohen said he believed his remarks at the time.

“At that time, I was knee-deep into the cult of Donald Trump,” he explained.

It emerged in court Tuesday that Cohen was the prosecution’s last scheduled witness. Trump’s lawyers said they had yet to decide whether their client, the presumptive GOP nominee in this year’s presidential election, would take the stand.

.

Trump’s ex-lawyer reads disparaging posts to his boss’s face

Defense lawyer Todd Blanche, straight out of the gate, gave the jury an idea of what they’re in for — starting his cross-examination by asking Cohen if he’d recently referred to him on TikTok as a “crying little s–t.”

“Sounds like something I would say,” Cohen retorted.

Justice Juan Merchan then sustained an objection from the prosecution, held a sidebar, and struck the question from the record.

Moments later, Blanche went in again, asking if Cohen had called Trump a “dictator douchebag,” to which Cohen again replied that it sounded like something he’d say.

Confronted later in the questioning with previous statements he’d made praising Trump — calling him “a good man” in 2015, saying that he “cares deeply about his country” and “he’s a man who tells it straight” — Cohen said, “At that time I was knee-deep into the cult of Donald Trump.”

Cohen denied that he was “obsessed” with Trump, as the defense has oft-alleged, instead saying he admired him.

Trump closed his eyes for long periods during his lawyer’s questioning, leaving spectators wondering if he was dozing off.

Blanche later asked Cohen if he had called him a “boorish cartoon misogynist” or a  “Cheeto-dusted cartoon villain,” which he agreed he likely did.

How Cohen turned on Trump

Cohen told the court that, in the months before his guilty plea in August 2021, he felt the need to stay loyal to Trump — but his family started urging him to step out of “the fold.”

“My wife, my daughter, my son, all said to me, ‘Why are you holding on to this loyalty? What are you doing? We’re supposed to be your first loyalty,” Cohen remembered.

“It was about time to listen to them,” Cohen said.

After this, on Aug. 21, 2018, he pleaded guilty to eight federal charges, including violating campaign finance laws, tax evasion, and bank fraud, before deciding that he “would not lie for President Trump any longer.”

The day after his August plea, Trump raged against him in a Twitter post: “If anyone is looking for a good lawyer, I would strongly suggest that you don’t retain the services of Michael Cohen!”

Cohen said he engaged in the “catch and kill” scheme to buy and bury Karen McDougal’s story at the behest of the then-president to smooth the path to the presidency for Trump.

He said that he regrets his work for Trump.

“I regret doing things for him that I should not have — lying, bullying people in order to effectuate a goal. I don’t regret working with the Trump Organization, ’cause, as I expressed before, some very interesting, great times. But, to keep the loyalty and to do things that he had asked me to do, I violated my moral compass. And I suffered the penalty. As has my family.”

‘Everything’s going to be OK’

After the FBI raided his residences in April 2018, Cohen said he felt frightened and “concerned, despondent, angry.” During search warrants executed on his Manhattan hotel room, apartment, and office, his phones and electronic devices were seized, along with other materials related to the hush money payment to Daniels, Cohen said.

He told the jury that the last time he communicated directly with Trump was on the phone just after the raids.

“He said to me, ‘Don’t worry, I am the president of the United States. There is nothing here. Everything is going to be OK. Stay tough. You are going to be OK,’” Cohen recalled, adding that others told him he was “loved” by Trump.

In the immediate aftermath, Cohen said he felt “reassured, because I had the president of the United States protecting me.”

Trump kept his eyes closed for much of Cohen’s testimony. Cohen sometimes exhaled audibly, once shaking his head, between questions. The jury also heard details of Cohen being a convicted perjurer — which Trump’s defense has repeatedly pointed to as proof of him being untrustworthy and is expected to hammer him about on cross-examination.

Cohen testified that he lied in 2017 about a Trump Tower real estate project in Moscow, telling Congress that he had only spoken to Trump about it three times, when they had really discussed it ten times.

“I was staying on Mr. Trump’s message that there was no ‘Russia, Russia, Russia,” Cohen replied.

Cohen says he spoke with Trump about hush money reimbursements at the White House

Cohen testified that he discussed the reimbursement payments with the then-president during a visit to the Oval Office on Feb. 8, 2017.

“So, I was sitting with President Trump and he asked me if I was OK, he asked me if I needed money,” Cohen recalled. In court, Trump scrunched his eyes tightly closed, frowning.

“He said, um, ‘Alright. Just make sure you deal with Allen,’” Cohen said, referring to the convicted ex-Trump Org CFO Allen Weisselberg.

Trump was joined in court with an entourage of around a dozen, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, and Eric Trump and his wife, Lara Trump.

Cohen told prosecutor Susan Hoffinger that he submitted falsified records at the behest of Trump’s longtime finance chief, billing for “services rendered” — not reimbursement for hush money he paid to porn star Stormy Daniels.

Displaying Cohen’s monthly invoices to the Trump Org, which he said were sent to Weisselberg and sometimes his deputy, former controller Jeff McConney, Hoffinger asked if any of them were for genuine legal services rendered.

“No, ma’am. They were for reimbursement,” Cohen said, a hint of sheepishness in his voice.

Cohen is soon expected to face a bruising cross-examination with the former president’s attorneys, who have sought to attack his credibility and told jurors he went rogue when he paid off Daniels.

During more than five hours in the witness box on Monday, Trump’s former lawyer and fixer described his former boss as a micromanager who knew about everything that went on at all levels of his company. He described himself as Trump’s loyal right-hand man — one who would bully, lie, and threaten to sue anyone who stood in the way of whatever it took “to make him happy” — and whose only job was to serve Trump. 

Cohen, 57, went to prison for the hush money payoff to porn star Stormy Daniels central to the case after pleading guilty to federal offenses in late 2018, cementing his bitter rivalry with the man he once said he’d take a bullet for. 

Trump, 77, is accused of repeatedly and fraudulently falsifying New York business records to disguise a hush-money scheme intended to hide damaging information from the voting public in 2016. Each of the 34 counts is tied to his alleged reimbursement to Cohen, which prosecutors say was falsely designated as payment for legal fees in a coverup. 

The presumptive GOP nominee in this year’s White House contest, whose courthouse entourage is growing by the day, walked into the courtroom around 9:25 a.m. flanked by an army of lawyers and the likes of right-wing biotech entrepreneur Ramaswamy, his conspiracy theory touting former competitor in the presidential race.

Catch up

Cohen said Trump had direct knowledge of a series of hush money payoffs to Daniels, former Playboy model Karen McDougal, and Trump Tower doorman Dino Sajudin to purchase their silence about a series of alleged sex scandals. He buttressed testimony by several witnesses who testified earlier in the trial, including former tabloid publisher David Pecker, who prosecutors allege was a part of the conspiracy that started in August 2015 to hide unflattering information about Trump from the electorate. 

“The two of you should work together. And anything negative that comes, you let Michael know, and we’ll handle it,” Cohen quoted Trump’s directive to Pecker. 

During his first day on the stand, Cohen testified that Trump was fully apprised of the payment to Daniels and promised to reimburse him. He told the court that the then-president-elect was present at a Trump Tower meeting in January 2017, where his Trump Org finance chief Allen Weisselberg said he’d receive his payback in the form of monthly checks purporting to be payment for his new role involving minor to no work as the president’s personal attorney.

“He approved it. And he also said: ‘This is going to be one heck of a ride in D.C.,’” Cohen said of Trump. 

Cohen wanted it in one lump sum, but “Mr. Trump said, No, it’s better, it’s better to do it over the 12 months,” the jury heard. 

The fixer said Weisselberg, who’s been convicted of tax fraud and perjury in the last two years, directed him to invoice the Trump Org monthly, marking that he was owed payment for legal services “and we will get you a check out.”

“And so, did you have any expectation that if you did work for him you would be paid?” prosecutor Susan Hoffinger asked. 

“None at all,” Cohen said. 

Check back for updates from the courtroom. 

During more than five hours in the witness box, Trump’s former lawyer and fixer described his boss as a micromanager who was intimately familiar with everything that went on beneath him and himself as Trump’s loyal lackey — one who would bully, lie and threaten to sue anyone who stood in the way of accomplishing the task the boss assigned him “to make him happy.”

Trump was involved in every last detail, Cohen said.

“Everything required Mr. Trump’s sign-off,” he testified in state Supreme Court in Manhattan, sitting feet away from his longtime boss turned arch-nemesis.

No matter the issue, “You would go straight back and tell him, especially if it was a matter that was troubling to him.”

Trump’s micromanagement as a business leader extended to his campaign for president, Cohen told the court, describing him as deeply entangled in efforts to hide a series of alleged sex scandals involving former Playboy model Karen McDougal, a Trump Tower doorman and porn star Stormy Daniels.

Cohen said he was tasked with paying off the adult film star $130,000 on the eve of the 2016 election amid the “catastrophic” release of the “Access Hollywood” tape, describing Trump as being furious it was even an issue — with Cohen having worked to silence her years beforehand.

“He said to me, this is a disaster. Total disaster. Women are going to hate me. Because this is really a disaster, women will hate me. Guys may think it’s cool,” Cohen quoted Trump as saying. “But this is going to be a disaster for the campaign.”

The former fixer said Trump ordered him to “just take care of it,” and to delay paying her off until after the election.

“Because if I win, it has no relevance,” Cohen quoted Trump. “If I lose, I don’t even care.”

When the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape came out — in which Trump was heard on a hot mic bragging about molesting women — Cohen said it was Trump’s wife’s idea to excuse it as “locker room talk.

“At least he told me that that’s what Melania had thought it was. And use that in order to get control over the story and to minimize its impact on him and his campaign,” Cohen said.

Trump, 77, is charged with 34 felony counts of falsification of business records, which are each tied to his alleged reimbursement to Cohen for paying off Daniels. Prosecutors say the payments were falsely logged as legal fees. The criminal charges are the first ever filed against a former U.S. president.

Prosecutors allege the payments represented the last stage of a conspiracy to influence the results of the election Trump won, orchestrated in August 2015 at Trump Tower at a meeting attended by Cohen, his boss and David Pecker, the former tabloid publisher and chairman of America Media, Inc., or AMI.

“What was discussed was the power of the National Enquirer in terms of being located at the cash register of so many supermarkets and bodegas; that if we can place positive stories about Mr. Trump, that would be beneficial; that if we could place negative stories about some of the other candidates, that would also be beneficial,” Cohen told the court of the meeting.

Bolstering testimony jurors heard from Pecker at the beginning of the trial, Cohen said the tabloid publisher told him and Trump “he could keep an eye out for anything negative about Mr. Trump and that he would be able to help us to know in advance” to “try to stop it from coming out.”

Cohen, 57, went to prison for the payoff to Daniels after pleading guilty to federal offenses in 2018. He and Trump barely looked in each other’s direction when Cohen walked into the courtroom around 9:30 a.m. and throughout his day on the stand.

Cohen, who frequently addressed the jury while answering Hoffinger’s questions, said his boss was directly aware he needed to be reimbursed for the money he paid Daniels after wiring it to her lawyer through a shell company, which he said Trump also knew about. He explained how Trump’s convicted former finance chief Allen Weisselberg tallied that he was owed $420,000 after doubling the expense to account for taxes and tacking on a bonus and another $50,000 expense.

Cohen laughed when asked why he had to set up a fake account to deposit the money.

“Oh, I’m not sure they would have opened it if it stated to pay off — to pay off an adult film star for a non-disclosure agreement,” he said.

He explained that Trump promised to pay him back while he was on vacation in December 2016, when he blew up about being shorted on his bonus by two-thirds.

“Don’t worry about that other thing,” he quoted Trump. “I’m going to take care of it when we get back.”

The former fixer directly tied Trump to the payments at the heart of the case. His first day of testimony yielded little evidence the jury hadn’t already seen, instead weaving together the paper trail prosecutors have laid out over the past four weeks in bank records, emails, text messages and call logs during testimony from 17 witnesses.

The defense has sought to portray Cohen as untrustworthy and unhinged — claiming he went rogue in paying off Daniels — but the fixer told the jury his fealty to his boss wasn’t so strong that he’d part with $130,000 with no expectation he’d be paid back.

Cohen challenged the defense’s claims that Trump was unaware of what Cohen was up to at any given moment and that any efforts on his part to hide unflattering information from his past were intended to protect his family.

During one line of questioning, prosecutor Susan Hoffinger asked Cohen if he brought up Melania Trump in his conversation with Trump about Daniels, who he said told him, “Don’t worry.”

Cohen said Trump never told him whether Daniels’ claims of a 2006 tryst in a Lake Tahoe hotel room, which Trump has strongly denied, were valid. When the porn star’s story was first published on a blog in 2011, he said Trump didn’t directly address its veracity but bragged about her being attracted to him.

“He told me that he was playing golf with Big Ben Roethlisberger, the football player, and they had met Stormy Daniels and others there. But she liked Mr. Trump; that women prefer Trump even over someone like Big Ben,” Cohen said.

When McDougal came forward with claims months before Daniels, which AMI would ultimately pay her $150,000 to stay quiet about, Cohen said Trump similarly took a moment to brag.

“His response to me was, ‘She’s really beautiful,’” Cohen recounted. “I said, ‘OK, but there’s a story that’s right now being shopped.’”

Trump’s directive, Cohen said: “Make sure it doesn’t get released.”

Cohen is expected to continue on the stand Tuesday and is slated to face a cross-examination for the ages when Trump’s legal team gets its time with him in the witness box.

Once among the closest allies of the former president, Cohen flipped on Trump when he pleaded guilty to crimes related to the hush money payments in 2018. He has now testified against Trump several times and even mocks him during TikTok lives, which last week prompted Justice Juan Merchan to ask prosecutors to tell him to zip it.

The former fixer paid off Stormy Daniels in October 2016 to buy her silence about her claim that she slept with Trump 10 years prior. The DA’s lawyers charge that Trump then reimbursed Cohen for the $130,000 payment — in the process of falsifying business records — all to conceal a scheme to influence the results of the election.

Here are some of the highlights of day one of Cohen’s testimony:

“A lot of women coming forward”

Trump allegedly warned Cohen ahead of the election that many negative stories would surface.

“Just be prepared, there’s gonna be a lot of women coming forward,” Cohen said Trump warned him during the 2016 presidential campaign.

The two women whose allegations of trysts and affairs with Trump have been central in the trial are Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal. But many other women have accused the presumptive Republican nominee of different forms of sexual misconduct, which Trump has denied.

Last year, he was found liable in a civil trial for sexually abusing and defaming E. Jean Carroll, who went public with her rape allegations in 2019.

Doing “poorly” with women

“He said to me this is a disaster — total disaster,” Cohen testified of Trump on the possible release of the Daniels allegations. “Women are going to hate me, this is really a disaster, women will hate me. Guys may think it’s cool, but this is going to be a disaster for the campaign.’”

At the time, Cohen said, Trump was polling “very poorly” with women.

“And this, coupled with the previous “Access Hollywood” tape, just stated this is a disaster. Just, get control over it.”

Not thinking about Melania

The prosecution has hammered in that the release of the tape, where Trump made the infamous “grab them by the p—y” comments, was taken as a potentially catastrophic hit to the Trump campaign.

His wife and family, Cohen said, did not get much consideration in all of this.

“He wasn’t really thinking about Melania, he was thinking about the campaign,” Cohen said.

At Trump’s direction

Many times throughout his testimony, Cohen recalled carrying out tasks at Trump’s direction — directly implicating the former president in the payoff of Daniels and in the reimbursements to Cohen.

“You handle it,” Trump allegedly told Cohen when a Trump Tower doorman was selling a story about a possible love child Trump had fathered.

“Make sure it doesn’t get released,” Cohen said Trump directed him when Playboy model Karen McDougal’s story almost went public.

“Just take care of it,” Trump allegedly told Cohen after he learned Stormy Daniels was peddling her story.

This key point, about Trump’s direct involvement in paying people off, and its repetition, is crucial to the prosecution’s case. Only Cohen, who worked most closely with Trump at the time of the alleged hush money payments, can testify to it.

Under questioning from prosecutor Susan Hoffinger, Cohen testified that Trump was intimately involved in the payoffs, and that “everything” needed his signoff.

Lie, bully, threaten

Earlier in the day, Cohen testified that he enjoyed his work for Trump, for whom he’d lie and bully and nearly threaten others to deliver results for the then-future president.

Trump himself approved the reimbursements for the payments to Daniels, Cohen said on Monday. The payments, with $130,000 going Daniels, were slated to begin in February 2017, a month after Trump was inaugurated.

“This is going to be one heck of a ride in D.C.,” Trump allegedly told Cohen after he gave the payments the green light.”

Burying Daniels’ story was all ‘about the campaign’: Cohen

Cohen testified about how the release of the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape — in which Trump boasted about grabbing women by the genitals — sent shockwaves through the Trump camp ahead of the election, and how the presidential candidate was worried that Stormy Daniels’ story about sleeping with him would be a “disaster” if it went public.

“[Trump] told me to work with [National Enquirer head] David [Pecker] and get control of this, purchase the life rights, we need to just stop this from getting out,” Cohen said, adding that he was directed to “push it” as long as he could, until after the election.

“If I win, it won’t have relevance, I’m the president. And if I lose, I don’t really care,” he recalled Trump telling him.

“He wasn’t really thinking about Melania, he was thinking about the campaign,” Cohen said of his former boss, who he said was always kept “abreast of everything.”

Trump shifted in his seat, looking angry, as Cohen told the courtroom that Trump directed him to “just take care of” Daniels’ story.

“He said to me, ‘This is really a disaster, women will hate me,’” Cohen said Trump told him. “’Guys may think it’s cool, but this is going to be a disaster for the campaign,’” Trump added, according to Cohen.

‘A lot of women coming forward’

“Just be prepared, there’s gonna be a lot of women coming forward,” Cohen, then a surrogate on Trump’s campaign, said the future president warned him as he embarked on his 2016 run for the White House.

The lawyer testified about the August 2015 Trump tower meeting where Cohen, Trump and supermarket tabloid publisher David Pecker allegedly hatched a plan to boost Trump’s candidacy by planting positive stories about Trump and repressing negative ones.

“What was discussed is the power of the National Enquirer in terms of it being located at the cash register of so many supermarkets and bodegas — that if we could place positive stories about Mr. Trump that would be beneficial, that if we could place negative stories about some of the other candid, that would also be beneficial,” Cohen testified.

Cohen walked the rapt jury through how he allegedly carried out that scheme and how Trump told him to “handle” a story from a Trump Tower doorman that he’d had a love child, and how he believed Playboy model Karen McDougal’s story of their nearly year-long affair would have a “significant” impact on the campaign.

Cohen learned of McDougal’s claims in the summer of 2016 from American Media Inc., the Enquirer’s parent company, and told Trump.

“I went to the office, knocked on it,” Cohen recalled in court. “Boss, I gotta talk to you … went in, talked to him about what I had just learned. I asked him if he knew who Karen McDougal was …

“His response was, ‘She’s really beautiful.’ I said, ‘OK, but there’s a story that’s right now being shopped.”

Cohen testifies about his work for Trump

The former fixer, who said that label was “fair,” testified that he’d lie, bully people and sometimes take a threatening tone — all to carry out his business for Trump.

Trump offered Cohen a job as his executive vice president and special counsel in 2007, where he would “only answer to him and I [would] work on issues that were of concern to him,” he said in response to questions from Hoffinger.

They communicated every day, several times a day in person or by phone. Trump didn’t use email: “He knows too many people who have gone down as a direct result of having emails that prosecutors can use in a case,” Cohen said in court.

Trump’s lawyer furiously took notes on a pad of paper when Cohen testified that he sometimes lied when it seemed necessary: “I wanted to accomplish the task. The only thing that was on my mind was to accomplish a task to make him happy.”

Cohen said he felt “on top of the world” one time when Trump told him his work was “fantastic” and “great.”

“It was an amazing experience in many, many ways,” he said of working for the former president.

“There were great times; there were less than great times. But for the most part, I enjoyed the responsibility that was given to me.”

Former fixer takes the stand

Trump gave his ex-lawyer a searing look as Cohen, the son of a holocaust survivor, described his upbringing in Nassau County, his education and journey to law school and how he was first introduced to Trump.

“I wanted to go to Wall Street; my grandmother was like, that’s not going to happen,” Cohen, wearing a pink tie, said.

He worked for 10 years as Trump’s special counsel, making about $425,000 a year, until 2017.

Cohen, 57, served three years in federal custody — half of it behind bars upstate — after pleading guilty in 2018 to paying off porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000 11 days before the 2016 election at Trump’s direction in violation of campaign finance laws, lying to Congress about Trump’s business dealings with Moscow, and other crimes. 

He’s expected to testify about discussing reimbursement for the hush money with Trump in the Oval Office and the eleventh-hour dash to silence Daniels about her claims of a one-night-stand as the Trump campaign sought to contain the fallout of the bombshell release of the “Access Hollywood” tape in October 2016. 

The 34 felony counts of falsification of business records facing Trump, 77, are each tied to his alleged reimbursement to Cohen in 2017, which prosecutors say came as the final stage of a scheme to influence the presidential election devised at an August 2015 meeting at Trump Tower attended by Trump, his fixer, and former tabloid publisher David Pecker.

Pecker, who testified first, told jurors he agreed to be the campaign’s “eyes and ears” — identifying negative stories that could come to light about Trump to be bought and buried and elevating hit jobs about his opponents. 

Trump denies all allegations and that he ever slept with Daniels or Playboy model Karen McDougal, who Pecker’s publishing company paid $150,000. His lawyers have claimed an “obsessed” Cohen went rogue in paying Daniels and that Trump believed he was paying his lawyer for legitimate legal services. 

Trump walked into the courtroom with a subdued expression around 9:20 a.m. with his son, Eric Trump, GOP Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, and an army of lawyers. 

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg took his seat in the courtroom’s front row shortly after Trump’s arrival. 

Check back for updates from the courtroom. 

Cohen has been outspoken about his feelings on his former boss ahead of his expected appearance next week, sparking a response from Trump’s lawyers. The ex-president is under a gag order and barred from talking about witnesses.

“It’s now becoming a problem every single day that President Trump is not allowed to respond to this witness but the witness continues to talk,” lawyer Todd Blanche said.

Earlier Friday, a defense team’s efforts to prove how the former president was concerned about how his family would take the news of the Stormy Daniels sex tryst allegations fizzled. The dramatic fourth week of the first criminal trial of a U.S. president wrapped on Friday with a series of witnesses establishing key pieces of evidence and setting the scene for the case’s star witness, Cohen.

Trump, 77, has pleaded not guilty to 34 felony charges alleging he covered up reimbursement to Cohen for paying adult film actress Stormy Daniels into silence 11 days before the 2016 election by logging it internally as payment for legal fees. 

Prosecutors say the payoff was hastily arranged as the Trump campaign sought to contain the fallout of the damning “Access Hollywood” tape and concluded a yearslong conspiracy to unlawfully promote Trump’s candidacy by suppressing negative information from voters. 

Trump’s defense has claimed that Cohen went rogue in paying off Daniels and that he believed he’d paid him for legitimate legal services. 

Social media digs upset Trump

In response to the request from Team Trump, Merchan directed prosecutors to keep Michael Cohen on a tighter leash in the home stretch of the case — even though they’ve said they’ve already done everything they could do.

Cohen “was talking explicitly” about the case on a TikTok live Wednesday night, dressed in a white t-shirt with a picture of Trump in an orange jumpsuit behind bars, Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanche said, asking that “he be prohibited from talking, the same way as Mr. Trump is.”

ADA Joshua Steinglass said Cohen had already been repeatedly warned to not make public statements.

“The fact of the matter is these witnesses are not subject to the gag order and we have no recourse if they make those statements,” Merchan said.

As Merchan ordered the prosecutors to remind Cohen not to make public statements, Trump smirked.

Trump v. Cohen set for next week

Laying the groundwork for Cohen’s expected testimony next week, prosecutors used Trump’s own words to show how his feelings about his longtime fixer changed amid revelations about the hush money scheme.

Trump came to the defense — and then bashed  — Cohen, who pleaded guilty to orchestrating the hush money payments to the porn star in 2018 in a series of tweets during his presidency after the feds began probing his fixer’s payoff to Daniels.

The tweets, read aloud to the jury by witness Georgia Longstreet, a paralegal for the Manhattan district attorney’s office, directly addressed the hush money payments.

“Mr. Cohen, an attorney, received a monthly retainer, not from the campaign and having nothing to do with the campaign, from which he entered into, through reimbursement, a private contract between two parties, known as a non-disclosure agreement, or NDA,” Trump wrote weeks after the FBI raided Cohen’s office in April 2018.

But Trump turned by the following August after Cohen’s surprise guilty plea to campaign finance violations and other crimes.

“If anyone is looking for a good lawyer, I would strongly suggest that you don’t retain the services of Michael Cohen!” he wrote in August of the same year.

Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg was in the courtroom for part of Friday’s proceedings.

‘The whole situation was very unpleasant’

Former top White House aide Madeleine Westerhout, who lost her job after saying she had a better relationship with Trump than his daughters, testified Friday morning that she understood the then-president was worried about his family when the Daniels allegations were made public.

But under further questioning, she couldn’t recall Trump mentioning his wife or kids at all in a conversation after the news broke.

“I don’t believe he specifically said that, but I could just tell the whole situation was very unpleasant,” Westerhout said to a sustained objection. Her comment was stricken.

Prosecutors are attempting to prove that Trump wanted Daniels’ story killed not for concern of his family — but over how news of the Tahoe dalliance would affect his political prospects.

Westerhout, 34, once Trump’s presidential executive assistant and director of Oval Office operations, first took the stand late Thursday, spoke glowingly of the presumptive Republican nominee and broke down into tears Thursday, relaying details of her firing after telling reporters she had a better relationship with the former president than his daughters and said they were overweight.

“I was invited by a White House colleague of mine to what I understood to be an off-the-record dinner. And at that dinner I said some things that I should not have said,” Westerhout testified.

“That mistake, eventually — ultimately, cost me my job. And I am very regretful of my youthful indiscretion. But I feel like I’ve learned a lot from that experience. I think I’ve grown a lot since then.”

Earlier in the week, Stormy Daniels took the stand for her bombshell testimony, including a fiery hourslong cross-examination by Susan Necheles, who attempted to paint her as an unreliable liar based on her work in the porn industry.

Necheles aggressively questioned Daniels, taking a slightly derogatory tone as she asked Daniels about her work in porn with “naked women and naked men” and insinuated that she was less credible because of her work in the adult film industry  

“You were selling yourself,” Necheles accused, in reference to Daniels’ “Make America Horny Again” tour in 2018.

Daniels, 45, was steely and confident from her perch on the witness stand, staring directly at Necheles as she answered questions. If she felt nervous, she didn’t show it much — wavering only in brief pauses in testimony when lawyers conferred with the judge on the side. Then, she wiped her glasses, fixed her hair, and stuck her tongue in her cheek at one point.

Trump has long denied having sex with Daniels, who’s said they had a sexual encounter in 2006 after she accepted a dinner invitation from the then-future president.

Daniels testified on Tuesday that she and Trump spoke at his hotel room for a couple hours. When she reentered the room from the bathroom, she found him stripped down to his boxers and a t-shirt and “felt the room spin.”

Regardless of who’s telling the truth, it’s not a matter central to the legal charges.

“You’ve acted and had sex in over 200 porn movies, right?” Necheles asked on Thursday afternoon.

“Around 150, yes,” Daniels, on her second day of testimony, replied.

“All that, but according to you, seeing a man on a bed in a t-shirt and boxer shorts was so upsetting that you got light-headed, the blood left your hands and feet, and you almost fainted?” the lawyer asked — seeming to imply that because she had a lot of sex as a porn star, her alleged shock upon seeing Trump stripped down was hard to believe.

The jury of seven men and five women did not look amused by this line of questioning — especially the women.

Necheles repeatedly probed Daniels’ account, at one point asking her if she has “a lot of experience making up phony sex stories,” as a writer and director of adult films.

“Wow,” Daniels said, sounding insulted. “That’s not how I would put it. The sex in the films is very much real — just like what happened in that room with Trump.”

Necheles pushed further, asking if Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, had “experience in writing these stories and memorizing them.”

“If this story wasn’t true, I would have written it to be a lot better,” Daniels quipped back.

Necheles asked whether this was the first time someone had made a pass at her.

 “No, but it is the first time they had a bodyguard standing outside the door … and were in their underwear and were twice my age,” the adult film star retorted, recalling the moment she emerged from the bathroom to find Trump sitting on his bed.

She later said her “own insecurities” kept her from refusing to have sex, after Necheles pointedly asked why she did not then “speak up and say you didn’t want to have sex with him.”

Trump scowled and crossed his arms at this point.

The presumptive Republican frontrunner has been charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records for covering up buying Daniels’ silence on their tryst, which the porn star says occurred at a Lake Tahoe golf tournament. 

The extraordinary rebuke by Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan — denying Trump’s latest request for a mistrial and a modified gag order in a one-two punch — followed tearful testimony from another of Trump’s White House acolytes, the unveiling of evidence appearing to starkly contradict much of Trump’s defense, and a contentious morning of cross-examination painting a perverted picture of Trump clad only in his underwear hitting on a woman half his age in a Lake Tahoe hotel room.

Trump’s legal team demanded a mistrial over those details, but an incredulous Merchan said the sordid account relayed by Daniels was a result of their own doing.

“For some reason, I don’t know why, you went into it ad nauseam on cross-examination,” Merchan addressed Trump lawyer Susan Necheles regarding the adult film star’s testimony about feeling disoriented during the alleged 2006 encounter.

The judge said he didn’t know how much time Necheles spent “drilling it over and over and over again into the jury’s ears” earlier Thursday.

“I don’t understand the reason for that,” he said.

Merchan, who repeated his confusion Tuesday about why Trump’s lawyers hadn’t objected more during graphic testimony, said they made their bed when the trial got underway by accusing Daniels of extortion and lies in opening statements.

“Right off the bat, that pits your client’s word against Ms. Daniels’ word,” the judge said, requiring prosecutors to rehabilitate their witness.

Merchan noted that Trump’s lawyers went after Daniels, yet, inexplicably, “You didn’t attack falsification of business records” charges that Trump faces.

Trump lawyer Todd Blanche, in his failed bid for a mistrial, said Daniels’ account of being cornered by Trump in his boxers — after she’d been summoned for dinner by his longtime bodyguard, Keith Schiller, at a charity golf tournament — and uncomfortably having unwanted sex without a condom was “a dog whistle for rape.”

“That has nothing to do with the case,” Blanche said.

But prosecutor Joshua Steinglass, along with outright rejecting the defense’s position that Daniels had changed her story over time, said Trump’s team was trying to have its cake and eat it, too — seeking to discredit her account while also preventing prosecutors from crediting it.

Steinglass said the testimony was also crucial to establish Trump’s motives.

“Mr. Blanche complains about the fact these details are messy. … But you know who knew what happened in that room, those messy details? Mr. Trump,” Steinglass said.

“That was Mr. Trump’s motive.”

Steinglass said the prosecution “deliberately” sought to protect Trump from embarrassment — declining to elaborate on the record explicitly but saying he’d do so in a sealed hearing — but a general account of the story the hush money purchased was necessary to prove their case.

“That is why Mr. Trump tried so hard to prevent the American people from learning about this.”

In denying the former president’s motion to pare back a gag order prohibiting comments about Daniels, Cohen and other trial participants, Merchan said he sought to protect their safety and the integrity of the trial. Trump’s team said he wanted to public respond to the claims by Daniels, who he has repeatedly belittled as “horse face” over the years.

Trump’s lawyer comes in hot on cross-examination

Grilling Daniels about purported inconsistencies in her testimony, her memoir “Full Disclosure” and various media interviews — like saying they met for dinner and at the trial that they didn’t eat — Trump lawyer Necheles also skeptically asked how a porn star could feel uncomfortable with a sexual encounter. 

“This was not the first time in your life someone had made a pass at you?” Necheles asked. 

“It is the first time they had a bodyguard standing outside the door … and were in their underwear and were twice my age,” Daniels shot back. 

When she took the stand on Tuesday, Daniels told the jury that about five years after her alleged tryst with Trump, she was threatened by a stranger in a Las Vegas parking lot to stay silent. She said that incident was front of mind when Trump announced his candidacy several years later and that she wanted to go public before being presented with a nondisclosure agreement from her then lawyer, Keith Davidson, and Trump’s henchman, Michael Cohen.  

Necheles repeatedly accused Daniels of being money hungry and fabricating her claims — which Daniels forcefully denied — and asked if she wanted the world to believe she’d slept with a future president once Cohen’s payoff hit the headlines in 2018 and she spoke out. 

“No, nobody would ever want to publicly say that,” Daniels said. “I wanted to defend myself.”

In another line of questioning, Necheles asked Daniels about her “experience making up phony sex stories” after directing more than 150 adult films.

“The sex in the films is very real, just like what happened to me in that room,” Daniels said. Some jurors were seen laughing when she then said: “If this story wasn’t true, I would have written it to be a lot better.”

On redirect with prosecutor Susan Hoffinger, Daniels spoke of having to move with her daughter out of fear for their safety after becoming a household name. She said she wanted to go public as “something won’t happen to you if everyone is looking at you.”

New evidence 

The presumptive Republican nominee in this year’s election, 77, has pleaded not guilty to felony charges alleging he covered up a $130,000 reimbursement to fixer Cohen for paying Daniels into silence 11 days before the 2016 election, logging it in the books as payment for legal fees. Prosecutors allege the payoff was hastily arranged as the Trump campaign sought to contain the fallout of the damning “Access Hollywood” tape. 

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office says the reimbursement capped a yearslong conspiracy to unlawfully promote Trump’s candidacy by suppressing negative information from voters that was devised between Trump, Cohen, and former tabloid publisher David Pecker at Trump Tower. 

Trump’s defense has claimed that Cohen went rogue in paying off Daniels and that he believed he’d paid him for legitimate legal services. 

In potentially crucial testimony, Rebecca Manochio, the former assistant of the Trump Organization’s longtime finance chief Allen Weisselberg, said that unlike the “stacks” of checks sent straight to Trump’s desk at the White House, she was directed in 2017 to send certain ones to the D.C. home of his personal bodyguard Schiller, and later to the home of his top aide John McEntee. 

Dates on some of the checks displayed aligned with those the jury has seen that were issued to Cohen. Manochio said Trump didn’t always sign off on checks, sometimes sending them back with questions, bolstering the prosecution’s position that he stayed on top of every penny.

Prosecutors also elicited testimony through Manochio showing Trump admitted in a civil case in California that he reimbursed Cohen for the hush money. 

Outside court, Trump criticized the case as “a disgrace.”

Body-cam footage released Friday — more than five weeks after the young man’s fatal shooting on March 27 — showed NYPD officers entering the family’s Queens home, tasing the 19-year-old and then shooting him in the span of just three minutes.

“These police were grown men with guns,” Notan Eva Costa, Rozario’s mother, tearfully said through a translator at a press conference on the steps of City Hall. “They did not have to kill my child. I tried to protect my child. I begged my son. I begged the police not to shoot. But the police still killed him.”

The state attorney general is investigating the incident, which has devastated the Bangladeshi immigrant family and fueled anger at the NYPD’s responses to 911 calls involving mentally ill people.

Rozario’s parents described the “hell” they’ve been through in the days since his death, saying they weren’t allowed back into their home for two days after the shooting and were forced to look for somewhere else to sleep.

The family said Rozario’s mom and brother, who were inside the home at the time, could have been killed, too.

“What Cianfrocco and Alongi did to my son should never have happened,” father Francis Rozario said of the responding officers. “They treated my family like we were animals. They almost killed my wife and my other son. It’s not right.”

The body-cam footage, released by state Attorney General Letitia James, shows two officers entering the house after responding to a 911 call Rozario made himself, according to cops. The call recording has still not been released to the public.

The two officers involved, Matthew Cianfrocco and Salvatore Alongi, encounter Rozario’s 17-year-old brother, who explains his sibling was having a mental health episode, the footage shows.

“Bipolar schizo?” an officer asked.

“He doesn’t even know what he’s doing, to be honest,” the brother replied, later saying he wasn’t sure if Rozario had been diagnosed with anything.

Inside the house, the officers came across Rozario, who grabbed a pair of scissors as they entered.

The officer then tased him as his mother screamed and held the man while his brother begged them not to shoot.

The officers stopped tasing and for a moment, Rozario stood still in the kitchen, no scissors in his hand.

“Don’t shoot,” Costa, his mother, said in halting English before letting go of her son’s arm, following the officer’s order to back away.

The officers tased Rozario again, and he picked up the scissors and ran at the cops before his brother and mother pushed him back into the kitchen, trying to pry the item out of his hands.

The officers then shot him multiple times.

“Officers Cianfrocco and Alongi killed my son in a minute,” Costa said Wednesday. “Before they came, everything was calm. Then they came and created chaos and murdered me in front of me.”

The family urged the mayor to fire the two officers.

“Mayor Adams is sending out the message that the NYPD can murder teenagers in our own homes and get away with it. They need to be fired and prosecuted immediately,” said Rozario’s brother Utsho Rozario, 17.

Asked for comment, the mayor’s office provided a previous statement in which Adams said in part, “I share the profound pain felt by New Yorkers after watching the tragic video of the incident. …  Out of respect for the process, I will avoid commenting any further.”

The NYPD said in a statement it is fully cooperating with the AG’s investigation and that its own NYPD Force Investigation Division is also conducting a probe.

The two officers involved are on modified duty and aren’t carrying firearms.

“Each year, the NYPD receives more than 9 million calls for service, approximately 155,000 of which are emergency calls involving people in the throes of an emotional or mental health crisis,” the NYPD stated. “Less than 1% of those calls result in police using any form of force; even fewer encounters result in the use of deadly physical force.”

The city’s largest police union voiced support of the two cops.

“These police officers were faced with an individual who was holding a weapon and endangering multiple people,” Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Hendry said in a statement. “As the body camera footage makes clear, they were trying to minimize the risks to everyone in that room and were forced to make split-second decisions based on those risks. They deserve a fair investigation … not demonization by activists who are exploiting this tragedy.”

With her other son’s hand at her back and her husband at her side, Costa wiped tears as she mourned the death of Rozario, whom she described as a disciplined student who dreamed of one day joining the military because he wanted to “do something for this country” and save enough money to buy a farm.

Utsho said he’s lost a brother, friend and role model. He remembered how Rozario spent hours practicing basketball when the family first moved to the U.S, so that “he became better than the people that played for their whole life.”

The family’s lawyer declined to share details about Rozario’s health or whether he was receiving any treatment.

“No mother should have to go through the pain I’m living through,” Costa said. “I hope no other mothers go through this in the future.”

The former president and current GOP candidate is facing 35 felony counts of falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments to Daniels to buy her silence about that evening in his hotel room.

At several points during her testimony, Trump seemed furious and disgusted.

Here are the top moments:

Why she met with Trump in the first place

Daniels testified that initially, she didn’t want to meet Trump for dinner.

“F–k no,” she said in response to the invitation, delivered by the then-future-president’s bodyguard.

Later on, though, she was convinced by her publicist.

“What could go wrong?” Daniels, wryly shrugging with a sad smile, remembered the publicist saying.

She ended up agreeing to meet him, thinking it could be a good business opportunity, as she wanted to get into film directing outside of porn.

Trump compared her to Ivanka

“You remind me of my daughter,” Trump told her, she said. “Smart and blonde and beautiful.”

Ivanka Trump and Daniels are three years apart in age. Trump, Daniels said in court, is about the age of her own father.

Trump added that he wanted to get Daniels on “The Apprentice,” she said — an idea he continued to dangle afterwards.

While she spoke, Daniels seemed a little jumpy at times, speaking rapidly, to the point where she was asked several times to slow down.

How she felt the moment she saw Trump in his boxers

Daniels testified she opened the bathroom door to find Trump sitting on the side of the bed stripped down to his boxers

Daniels remembered how, after leaving Trump to use the restroom, it was “like a jump scare” to see him stripped down and waiting for her.

“I felt the room spin in slow motion,” she said. “I felt the blood leave my hands… almost like when you stand up too fast.”

Daniels just “stared at the ceiling”

Daniels said she just “stared at the ceiling” during sex, and that Trump didn’t wear a condom.

“Was that concerning to you?” asked prosecutor Susan Hoffinger.

“Yes.”

“Did you say anything about it?

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I didn’t say anything at all.”

It was “brief,” Daniels testified.

Daniels said she blacked out during sex

“I had my clothes and my shoes off. I removed my bra,” she said. “We were in missionary position.”

Merchan cut her off here, asking prosecutors not to go into graphic detail.

After, she felt “ashamed”

She told “very few people that we had actually had sex.”

“I felt ashamed that I didn’t stop it,” Daniels said, “that I didn’t say no.”

She didn’t tell her husband until the news broke years later.

Trump’s lawyer challenges Daniels

During a more tense moment in the courtroom, Trump lawyer Susan Necheles asked Daniels about a 2011 meeting with lawyer Gloria Allred that she wrote about in her book. Daniels responded that she gave Allred an “abbreviated” version of her encounter with Trump, leaving out the sex.

“You’re making this up as you sit there,” Necheles said  Daniels responded after a long pause, looking almost repulsed: “No.”

Cross-examination was at points contentious as Daniels pushed back on the idea that she got involved with Trump because she was after money.

The “orange turd” comment

Necheles had Daniels read aloud, to Trump’s face, brutal posts about the former president.

“I don’t owe him shit and I’ll never give that orange turd a dime [laughing emoji],” Daniels wrote on Twitter in Nov 2022.

Necheles accused her of “calling him names,” which Daniels agreed she did, “’cause he made fun of me first.”

“I will go to jail before I pay a penny,” she wrote in another tweet from March 2022, related to legal fees she’s ordered to pay after she lost a 2018 defamation lawsuit against Trump.

Daniels admits hating Trump

“Am I correct that you hate Donald Trump?” Trump’s lawyer Susan Necheles asked during cross-examination.

“Yes,” Daniels replied.

“You want him to go to jail?” Necheles asked her.

“I want him to be held accountable,” Daniels replied.