“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.

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. 

Trump’s former personal lawyer and fixer — whose payoff to porn star Stormy Daniels on the eve of the 2016 election is now at the center of the first criminal trial of an American president — is slated to take the stand next, two sources confirmed to the Daily News.

He’s expected to tell jurors about the deal he negotiated to buy the adult film star’s silence about her alleged extramarital tryst with his boss in a Lake Tahoe hotel room and being reimbursed by Trump after winning the White House. 

The $130,000 hush money payment saw the longtime Trump loyalist, 57, become a felon and lose his law license after pleading guilty in 2018 to breaking federal campaign finance laws, lying to Congress about Trump’s business dealings with Russia, and other crimes. 

Cohen split his three-year sentence between FCI Otisville in upstate New York, in an ankle bracelet at his Trump Park Ave condominium, and wound up back behind bars when he refused not to write a book about Trump while under house arrest. 

In the Manhattan case now underway, Trump, 77, is accused of 34 felony counts of falsification of business records, which allege he covered up reimbursement to Cohen in 2017 by logging a series of monthly checks as payment for legal fees. 

Trump’s defense team has argued that an “obsessed” Cohen went rogue in paying off the adult film star and that he mindlessly signed what was put in front of him, believing it covered his personal lawyer’s retainer fee, while he was busy running the country.

“A very good bookkeeper marked a legal expense as a legal expense,” Trump said on his way out of court on Friday, adding Cohen “was a lawyer, not a fixer.”

Helping the DA

The fixer is openly cooperating against Trump in the Manhattan district attorney’s case, meeting more than a dozen times with investigators over a yearslong period starting when he was in prison. 

Following his conviction, Cohen, 57, came out swinging against his longtime boss, splurging about the criminality he’d witnessed as his henchman in testimony before Congress that was watched worldwide.

Those disclosures led to the New York attorney general’s civil fraud case against Trump and his top company executives, which resulted last February in multiple liability findings and almost half a billion dollars in fines following a three-month trial at which Trump stormed out with his Secret Service entourage while Cohen was on the stand.

He won’t be able to do that in a criminal courtroom. 

The jury in the hush money case is set to meet Trump’s one-time bulldog and now disbarred attorney after hearing testimony from 17 witnesses, who shed light on the alleged conspiracy to undermine the integrity of the election Trump won by hiding unflattering information about his past from the U.S. electorate and the inner workings of his real estate empire’s bookkeeping department and White House administration. 

He has yet to step foot in the courtroom, but Cohen’s presence has been omnipresent since the case went on trial. Jurors have heard audio recordings of him negotiating a hush money deal with Daniels’ lawyer in the waning days of the 2016 race and appearing to discuss a payoff to Playboy model Karen McDougal with Trump.

A cross exam for the ages

Cohen is slated to face a cross-examination for the ages when Trump’s lawyers meet with him in the witness box, who are expected to hammer him on his history of lies and acerbic jabs targeting Trump on social media and his podcast, in his books, and on countless cable TV appearances. 

On Friday, the jury saw extensive phone records showing Trump and Cohen were constantly on the phone to one another in the years of the alleged scheme. 

Jurors also saw Twitter posts made by then-President Trump in 2018, in which he described the nondisclosure agreement his lawyer obtained from Daniels as “a harmless contract between two parties” unrelated to his presidential campaign and tweets praising his lawyer after the feds raided his residences as “a fine person with a wonderful family,” who he had “always liked & respected,” and who would never flip.

In a tweet months later also shown to the jury, after Cohen pleaded guilty to doing Trump’s dirty work, the then-president took a different tone. 

“If anyone is looking for a good lawyer, I would strongly suggest you don’t retain the services of Michael Cohen!” 

Cohen declined to comment when reached by The News. 

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.”

Just feet away from a stone-faced Trump, Daniels, 45, provided an in-depth account of the alleged tryst the public has long known about — now in focus at the historic first criminal trial of a U.S. president — during almost five hours in the witness box. The Baton Rouge, La., native, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, described feeling stopped in her tracks coming out of Trump’s master bathroom to find him splayed out, half-dressed, and uncomfortable that he didn’t wear a condom.

“Mr. Trump had come into the bedroom and was on the bed, basically between myself and the exit,” Daniels testified, describing Trump as posing in nothing but boxers and a t-shirt and the room spinning in slow motion.

“The next thing I know, I was on the bed, somehow on the opposite side,” Daniels recalled, telling the court she felt the blood leave her hands and describing that she “blacked out,” but not as a result of being under the influence.

“I had my clothes and my shoes off. I believe my bra, however, was still on. We were in the missionary position,” Daniels said. “I was trying to think about anything other than what was happening there.”

Trump, 77, scowled and trained his eyes away from the witness stand through much of Daniels’ testimony on Tuesday as the porn star recounted their alleged sexual encounter nearly 20 years ago at a celebrity golf tournament.

At one point, State Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan spotted the defendant “cursing audibly” at the defense table and shaking his head. At a sidebar, he warned his lawyers that he’d hold him in contempt for witness intimidation if he didn’t tone it down.

The tryst came after Daniels recounted a two-hour chinwag she had with Trump after arriving at his room. She testified that Trump told her that he didn’t share a room with his then-wife of less than two years, Melania, that she reminded him of his “smart and blond and beautiful” daughter, and asked her whether there were labor unions in the porn industry.

Daniels said she ended up at Trump’s hotel room after being invited to have dinner with him by his longtime former bodyguard, Keith Schiller. Identifying the presumptive Republican nominee in this year’s presidential election as the man at the defense table in “a navy blue jacket,” Daniels told the jury they first met on the Lake Tahoe golf course in July 2006, when she was 27 and Trump was 60, noting he was “probably older than my father.”

Daniels said she accepted the dinner invitation at her agent’s urging.

“It will make a great story,” she quoted her former publicist. “What could possibly go wrong?”

Daniels told the court that Trump was wearing “silk or satin pajamas” when she arrived at his hotel room at Schiller’s behest and cracked a joke about him stealing the late former Playboy owner Hugh Hefner’s pajamas.

Under questioning by prosecutor Susan Hoffinger, Daniels said she wanted to leave once she came out of the bathroom and realized what Trump had in mind, but clarified that he didn’t threaten her or force himself on her.

“I was in a fun house, slow motion. I just thought to myself, ‘Great, I’ve put myself in this bad situation,’” she recalled.

Hoffinger, who later told the court she tried not to elicit too much detail but needed to establish Daniels’ credibility after the defense sought to impugn it in their opening statement, asked the adult film entertainer to detail the encounter in broad strokes.

“Was he wearing a condom?” Hoffinger asked.

“No,” Daniels replied.

“Was that concerning to you?”

“Yes.”

Daniels said she didn’t say anything about concerns over using protection — “I didn’t say anything at all” — and conceded the entire encounter was brief.

Afterward, she told the court she remembered struggling to put her strappy gold high heels on “because my hands were shaking so hard.”

“He said, ‘Oh, great. Let’s get together again, honeybunch,’” Daniels testified. “I just wanted to leave.”

Merchan sustained multiple objections from the defense as Daniels recounted the alleged extramarital liaison, later telling Trump’s lawyers when he denied their mistrial motion that he didn’t think they objected enough and that much of the testimony would have been “better left unsaid.”

In their request for a mistrial, coming right after the lunch break, Trump’s team took issue with Daniels’ account of him not wearing protection and her description of an unequal power dynamic between the two. Daniels described discomfort with Trump “being bigger and blocking the way.”

“This is the kind of testimony that makes it impossible to come back from,” Blanche said.

But Hoffinger countered that the defense had opened the door in their initial statements to jurors on the first day of trial, accusing Daniels of extortion.

“At the end of the day, your honor, this is what the defendant was trying to hide.”

Trump is charged with 34 felonies in the case, all of which he denies, alleging he covered up his reimbursement to his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, for paying off Daniels a decade after the alleged tryst right before he took the White House.

Prosecutors say the payments came as the last stage of an unlawful scheme to influence the results of the 2016 election, first devised at Trump Tower between Trump, Cohen, and former tabloid publisher David Pecker.

The former president has vehemently denied Daniels’ allegations, deriding her as “horseface” in comments presented to jurors Tuesday, or ever having a relationship with her. Still, the porn star said countless witnesses who heard Trump ringing her up to three times a week after the golf tournament could dispute that.

“I always put him on speakerphone; we thought it was funny,” she told the court, conceding that Trump, who “always called me ‘honeybunch,’” didn’t know he was on speaker.

“Dozens and dozens of people heard me on the phone to him. It was not a secret.”

Daniels said she saw Trump again after their alleged sex, including at a night club the following day and at Trump Tower and Los Angeles in the year after, where she said she lied to him and said she was menstruating to avoid sex. She said she kept in touch with him after he floated TV opportunities.

Daniels twice said “absolutely not” when Hoffinger asked if Trump asked her to keep their tryst confidential or seemed concerned about it getting out. The L.A. meetup was the last time they saw each other, though she called her a few more times—including to let her know he’d been “overruled” about a promise to get her on “The Apprentice.”

Getting to the heart of the criminal allegations against Trump later in the day, Hoffinger asked the porn star about initially coming forward about what had happened in 2011 to InTouch Weekly in a story later killed when Trump’s fixer threatened to sue. The same year, she told jurors she began to feel unsafe when a man threatened her in a Las Vegas parking lot, telling her not to speak out about her encounter with Trump.

Daniels said the incident was front of mind when Trump announced he was running for president three years later in the summer of 2015, and her agent called her about selling her story. At the time, the award-winning Daniels said she was in the best financial position of her career and didn’t need the money.

Last week, the jury heard from Daniels’ former lawyer, Keith Davidson — who also repped former Playboy model Karen McDougal in an alleged hush money deal — who described dealing with a frantic Cohen in the waning days of the 2016 race, who sought to bury her story following the bombshell release of the “Access Hollywood” tape.

Hoffinger asked Daniels if she had wanted her lawyer to negotiate with Cohen to silence her for money. “My motivation wasn’t money; it was to get the story out,” she said adamantly. I was motivated out of fear, not money.”

Daniels said that after she hesitantly signed the non-disclosure deal for $130,000—which she got $96,000 of after her lawyer and agent took out their cuts—she understood Trump to be the beneficiary. She told the court that it agreed that neither of them could acknowledge knowing the other and that she would be liable for $1 million “every time I said something.”

But Cohen lagged in sending the payment she understood was coming from Trump to his fixer to her lawyer, Davidson, and she considered backing out.

After the election, Daniels, who said she felt deep shame about the encounter, said that she didn’t want to face the repercussions of the story becoming public and what her husband would feel. She abided by the deal, declining to speak out until after the Wall Street Journal reported on it in 2018, and “chaos” ensued.

Daniels is expected to resume cross-examination with Trump lawyer Susan Necheles on Thursday. In under two hours of questioning, Daniels admitted to Trump’s lawyer that she hated her client and hoped to never pay him $560,000 in attorneys’ fees owed in a separate civil matter.

The document displayed was a bank statement provided to the Trump Organization’s accounting department in early 2017 from Cohen, showing he’d transferred $130,000 to Keith Davidson, the lawyer of Stormy Daniels, who claimed she’d had an extramarital liaison with Trump in 2006. 

Prosecutors introduced it during testimony by former Trump Organization controller Jeffrey McConney, who identified rough notes at the bottom as the penmanship of his ex-boss, Trump’s twice-convicted longtime Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg.

“I’ve read his handwriting for about 35 years,” McConney told the court when asked how he was sure.

The finance chief’s notes tallied up how much money Cohen was owed in expenses: $180,000, when accounting for the payoff to Davidson plus an additional $50,000 campaign purchase Trump’s fixer paid out of pocket. The CFO then doubled that number to account for taxes and tacked on a $60,000 bonus, bringing the total to $420,000, which Cohen received in monthly checks signed by Trump for $35,000, McConney said. 

The prosecution introduced the First Republic Bank statement as proof that Trump knowingly reimbursed Cohen for hush money to Daniels. Last week, jurors heard of how Cohen set up the bank account in the waning days of the 2016 race to get money to Daniels in a hurry so voters wouldn’t learn her allegations of an extramarital tryst with Trump, wiring it via a shell company, Essential Consultants LLC. 

Trump’s lawyers have claimed that his former fixer went rogue in paying off the adult film actor, unbeknownst to his boss. They claim Trump signed checks put in front of him, believing he was simply paying his lawyer for lawyering.

The jury saw the statement among a paper trail of evidence introduced Monday tied to each of the 34 counts of falsification of business records with which the former president is charged — 11 checks issued to Cohen, which all bore Trump’s familiar spiky signature in black Sharpie, 12 corresponding ledger entries and 11 invoices, in which the fixer billed for “a retainer agreement.”

“Did you ever see a retainer agreement?” prosecutor Matthew Colangelo asked McConney. 

“I did not,” the ex-controller conceded, later acknowledging that Cohen’s invoices were never sent to the company’s legal department.

The former controller, testifying against his will for the third time in as many years in a Trump case, said three checks cut for Cohen came from Trump’s trust, and nine came from Trump’s personal bank account. 

McConney said he first learned Cohen was owed money in January 2017 from Weisselberg, who’s currently serving time on Rikers Island for committing perjury at the attorney general’s tax fraud trial against Trump after working for the Trump family for nearly half a century. Weisselberg and McConney were also accused of financial fraud in that case and hit with heavy penalties. They and Trump are appealing. 

“Allen said we had to get some money to Michael, reimburse Michael,” McConney recalled. 

“Only Mr. Trump” could sign off on checks sent out of his account, jurors heard Monday from Deborah Tarasoff, a lower-level payroll staffer, and McConney, bolstering the prosecution’s argument that Trump was never left out of the loop. 

“Somehow we would have to get a package down to the White House, get it to the president, get the president to sign the checks, get the checks returned to us and then have the checks mailed out,” McConney said.

On cross-examination with Emil Bove, Trump’s lawyer pressed the ex–controller on whether he’d ever discussed the filing system with Trump, whether he was privy to Weisselberg’s conversations with the boss, or whether he was ever explicitly directed by Trump to do what he described to the jury. He answered no to all questions. 

But when the prosecution followed up, Colangelo asked if McConney had previously acknowledged that Weisselberg sometimes kept him in the dark, which he said was true.

“You were told to do something, and you did it?” Colangelo asked.

“Yes.”

Tarasoff, a 24-year vet at the Trump Org, walked jurors through various reporting procedures and how checks were cut. Her relatively dry testimony came alongside some of the most crucial evidence in the case — the checks, ledger entries, and Cohen’s invoices. 

Tarasoff said Trump didn’t give the green light for every check, sometimes writing “VOID” in black Sharpie and sending them back. 

Over the last two weeks, prosecutors laid out an alleged conspiracy to undermine the integrity of the 2016 election and, as of Monday, began linking it to the alleged reimbursement to Cohen, which they say capped the scheme. 

They told state Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan on Monday that they expect to finish their case in around two weeks. Cohen, who was federally convicted for the hush money scheme in 2018, and Daniels are slated to soon take the stand.

Earlier Monday, Merchan found Trump had violated a gag order prohibiting comments about trial participants a tenth time. 

In his sternest warning yet, the judge said it appeared the fines he previously issued for other violations were not working, forcing him to start considering more severe punishment.

“Mr. Trump, it’s important to understand that the last thing I want to do is to put you in jail,” Merchan addressed Trump. 

“You are the former president of the United States and possibly the next president, as well.”

In an accompanying written order, the judge laid out how Trump’s April 22 comments to conservative news channel Real America’s Voice — that the “jury was picked so fast – 95% democrats” — were a clear breach. 

After proceedings wrapped for the day, Trump said he wasn’t fazed, telling reporters outside the courtroom, “Our Constitution is much more important than jail. It’s not even close. I’ll give that sacrifice any day.”

Trump’s former White House Communications Director and campaign spokeswoman, once considered among his closest confidants, was referencing the only conversation she knew of that Trump had with Cohen about paying off Daniels, which she said Trump told her about after the payment was first reported in detail in February 2018.

“Mr. Trump’s opinion was it was better to be dealing with it now, and that it would have been bad to have that story come out before the election,” Hicks testified in Manhattan Supreme Court.

Hicks said the conversation happened after Cohen issued a statement to The New York Times denying Trump had anything to do with a $130,000 payment he issued to Daniels on the eve of the 2016 election to stay silent about an alleged extramarital one-night stand with Trump at a 2006 charity golf tournament.

“President Trump [was] saying he spoke to Michael, and that Michael had paid this woman to protect him from a false allegation and that, you know, Michael felt like it was his job to protect him, and that’s what he was doing. And he did it out of the kindness of his own heart. He never told anybody about it.” 

Hicks, who testified under a subpoena, said Trump called it a “generous” thing to do and that he appreciated Cohen’s “loyalty.”

Prosecutor Matthew Colangelo then asked Hicks if that squared with the Cohen she knew. 

“I’d say that would be out of character for Michael,” Hicks conceded. “I didn’t know Michael to be an especially charitable person or selfless person, um, [he’s] the kind of person who seeks credit.”

Colangelo then ended his direct examination by asking if Trump ever said anything about timing, prompting Hicks’ answer about him saying it would have been worse had the payoff been reported on before the election. 

Moments later, when Trump lawyer Emil Bove had barely begun his cross-examination, she broke down into tears, prompting Judge Juan Merchan to call a recess abruptly. 

Lawyers for the presumptive Republican frontrunner in this year’s election have contended that Trump “fought back” against “salacious allegations” to protect his reputation and his family and that there was nothing inherently criminal about his actions. They claim that Cohen went rogue when he paid the adult film actor. 

But the testimony by Hicks appeared to bolster the prosecution’s case alleging the payment was intended to influence the results of the election by making sure voters didn’t learn any unflattering details about Trump’s past — and cast serious doubt on the likelihood Cohen didn’t expect to be paid back.

Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsification of business records, each tied to his alleged reimbursement to Cohen. 

Prosecutors say the compensation to Cohen, doled out in checks, counted as felony crimes as it concluded a carefully-planned scheme to defraud the U.S. electorate devised at a meeting between Trump, his fixer, and David Pecker, the former CEO of American Media Inc, or AMI, in August 2015 at Trump Tower, where Trump had announced his candidacy a couple of months before. 

Concern for Melania

But during her less than three hours on the stand, Hicks said Trump did care about his wife’s feelings.

Testifying about another story published by the Wall Street Journal just days before the election, which reported that the National Enquirer had paid former Playboy model Karen McDougal $150,000 for the lifetime rights to her story about an alleged 10-month affair with Trump — and then never published it — Hicks said Trump was concerned about how his wife would view it. 

“[He] wanted me to make sure that the newspapers weren’t delivered to their residence that morning,” she testified, adding that he didn’t specifically mention worries about the campaign but said “everything” around that time was considered within the campaign context. 

“I’m almost certain he would have asked me, ‘How’s it playing?’”

Hicks repeated what she told the House Judiciary Committee in 2019 about being directed to issue a public statement denying McDougal’s claims as “absolutely, unequivocally untrue.” 

Later, on cross with Bove, Hicks again said the sex scandals mattered to Trump personally. 

“She doesn’t weigh in all the time, but when she does, it’s really meaningful to him, and he really, really respects what she has to say,” Hicks said of Melania Trump, who has not attended the trial. “So I think he was just concerned about what her perception of this would be.” 

Trump had his eyes trained on his former acolyte when she took the stand earlier Friday and told the jury she was “very nervous.” Hicks said she got a job working for his real estate company in 2014 after doing public relations work for his daughter, Ivanka Trump.

The following year, Trump brought her on board as he mulled a presidential run and announced his candidacy in June 2015. She worked at the White House until April 2018 and then returned in March 2020, leaving after the Jan. 6 insurrection of the U.S. Capitol. Hicks said she hadn’t spoken to Trump since 2022.

Access Hollywood tape

Hicks described having her work cut out for her upon the bombshell release of the “Access Hollywood” tape in October 2016, which she said she learned about via an email from a Washington Post reporter while in her 14th-floor office at Trump Tower. She said Trump was upstairs in a 25th-floor conference room prepping for a debate against Hilary Clinton, joined by Kellyanne Conway, Jared Kushner, and Chris Christie. 

On the now-infamous tape, Trump was heard on a hot mic telling former “Today” host that famous men can “grab” women “by the p—y.” 

In previous testimony from Pecker and Keith Davidson, the lawyer who repped Daniels and McDougal in hush money negotiations, jurors have heard that the Daniels payoff was hastily arranged in the waning days of the 2016 race out of fear her allegations would irreparably harm Trump coming so soon after the tape. 

Describing her reaction as “a little stunned,” Hicks said she had a sense the story would blow up, calling it  “a damaging development” and a “crisis.” Before she or Trump had seen the tape, only a transcript, she said Trump said it “didn’t sound like something he would say,” and that he was upset. 

Prosecutors showed the jury a copy of the Trump campaign’s response: “This was locker room banter, a private conversation that took place many years ago. Bill Clinton has said far worse to me on the golf course – not even close. I apologize if anyone was offended.”

Merchan did not allow them to show the tape, but jurors had a transcript of what was said. 

Before the jury took their seats Friday, the judge told Trump that he is in no way limited by what he can say if he chooses to take the stand in his own defense, correcting a claim Trump made outside court on Thursday that a gag order prevents him from testifying. 

A court official confirmed to the Daily News later Friday that Trump had settled a $9,000 fine Merchan issued Tuesday when he found Trump in criminal contempt for nine Truth Social posts mentioning trial participants in violation of a gag order. 

On his way out of court Friday, Trump said the country was “going to hell,” and wished reporters a good weekend. 

“I was very interested in what took place today,” he added. 

“I need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info regarding our friend David,” Cohen was heard saying on a recording he secretly made in September 2016, in seeming reference to David Pecker, the former head of tabloid publisher American Media.

On the recording, Cohen tells Trump, “I’ve spoken to Allen Weisselberg about how to set the whole thing up,” in terms of “funding,” referring to the Trump Organization’s longtime, twice-convicted finance chief.

“What do we got to pay for this? One-fifty?” Trump said.

Later on the tape, which CNN reported on in 2018, Cohen is heard saying, “We’ll have to pay,” and Trump says, “Pay with cash,” prompting his fixer to respond, “No, no, no,” before Trump says “check” and the recording ends.

The potentially damning evidence came in during testimony from Doug Daus, a staffer at the Manhattan district attorney’s high-tech analysis unit who authenticated digital evidence. Members of the jury appeared riveted as Trump and Cohen’s voices echoed off the courtroom walls. Trump looked peeved.

The tape was played shortly after the jury heard extensive testimony from Keith Davidson, the lawyer who repped McDougal and porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016 as the two women mulled coming forward with unflattering information about Trump in the leadup to the election.

AMI, the National Enquirer’s parent company, handled the $150,000 payment to McDougal in a deal finalized in August 2016, the jury heard from the women’s former lawyer and last week from Pecker. The model has long claimed she had a nearly yearlong affair with Trump starting in 2006, not long after he wed Melania.

Trump is charged in the case with 34 counts of falsification of New York business records, accusing him of covering up payment to Cohen in 2017 to disguise that it was reimbursement for paying Daniels $130,000 in late October 2016. He’s pleaded not guilty and could spend up to four years in prison if convicted.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office alleges the payments to Cohen during Trump’s first year in the White House rounded off an illicit scheme to defraud the American electorate devised at an August 2015 meeting at Trump Tower attended by Trump, Cohen, and Pecker, who told jurors last week he agreed to be the budding Trump campaign’s “eyes and ears.”

Testimony on Thursday also suggested Trump was similarly aware of the Daniels payoff, which Davidson said was hastily arranged on the eve of the election between him and Cohen after the Enquirer backed out of a deal with her at the last minute.

“I can’t even tell you how many times he said to me, ‘You know, I hate the fact that we did it.’ And my comment to him was, ‘But every person that you’ve spoken to told you it was the right move,’” Cohen said in another undated recording played during Davidson’s testimony, relaying his communications with Trump about the adult film star to Davidson.

Descriptions by Davidson of chaotic eleventh-hour negotiations with Cohen to buy Daniels’ silence on the eve of the election stood in contrast to Team Trump’s position that efforts to silence women were executed to protect his reputation and his family rather than win him the election.

In one text exchange dated the night of the 2016 election between the lawyer and Dylan Howard, the former top editor of the National Enquirer, Davidson expressed shock at his potential role in Trump’s stunning victory against Hilary Clinton.

“What have we done?” the lawyer wrote in the text displayed in court Thursday.

“Oh my god,” Howard replied.

Assistant District Attorney Joshua Steinglass asked Davidson what he meant.

“There was sort of surprise among the broadcasters and others that Donald Trump was leading in the polls,” Davidson said, calling it “gallows humor” and saying there was an understanding “our activities may have in some way assisted the presidential campaign of Donald Trump.”

Davidson said Cohen — who was convicted of federal charges related to the hush money scheme in 2018 — became increasingly frantic after the election when his boss still hadn’t paid him back for the Daniels payoff.

Recalling a phone call he received from Cohen in December 2016, Davidson said Trump’s then-personal lawyer sounded “depressed and despondent,” later saying he sounded suicidal over the money and because Trump wasn’t bringing him to Washington.

On a red-hot cross-examination, Trump attorney Emil Bove sought to portray Davidson as a shady lawyer by bringing up other hush money arrangements he was involved in, including with Hulk Hogan, Lindsay Lohan, and Charlie Sheen.

Bove at one point asked Davidson if he was “pretty well versed in coming right up to the line without committing extortion.”

The lawyer admitted to Bove that he had never met Trump, spoken to him, or been in a room with him until the trial. Toward the end of his testimony, Bove zeroed in on the Daniels agreement Davidson said was for “attorneys’ eyes only,” which revealed Trump and Daniels’ real names disguised in the underlying contract under pseudonyms. Bove sought to highlight that it didn’t bear Trump’s signature.

Before jurors took their seats for the day, state Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan heard arguments from prosecutors and the former president’s attorneys concerning four more instances of Trump publicly commenting on witnesses and jurors in the case.

Prosecutor Chris Conroy said Trump should be fined another $4,000 for public remarks he made about the jury and witnesses like Pecker Cohen.

Trump lawyer Todd Blanche said his client had not willfully violated the gag order and was defending himself against criticism as a presidential candidate. He said Cohen’s constant taunts, like recently calling Trump “Von Sh–zInPantz,” were essentially “daring” him to respond.

On Tuesday, the judge imposed $9,000 in sanctions for other comments Trump made about trial participants. Merchan did not immediately rule on the latest alleged violations but sounded unconvinced by Blanche’s arguments.

“Other people are allowed to do whatever they want to us,” Trump said after the trial wrapped for the day. “And I’m not allowed, as a presidential candidate.”