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Journalism of Courage
The former United States President Donald Trump’s ex-lawyer turned foe Michael Cohen returned to the witness stand, on Tuesday (May 14) in the ongoing landmark criminal trial involving the Republican presidential candidate.
In his testimony during the inaugural criminal trial involving the former American president, Cohen disclosed that he had arranged a $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels,who had testified the previous week about a brief intimate encounter she claimed to have had with Trump in 2006.
While on the witness stand on Monday, Cohen stated that he made the payment to Daniels to secure her silence prior to the 2016 presidential election, emphasizing that her narrative would have had severe repercussions.
“He said to me, ‘This is a disaster, a total disaster. Women are going to hate me,’” Cohen testified. “‘Guys, they think it’s cool, but this is going to be a disaster for the campaign.’”
“He expressed to me: Just do it,” Cohen said.
“The task he gave to me was finished, accomplished and done,” Cohen testified, before pointing to a second reason for updating his boss: “to take credit for myself so that he knew I had done it and finished it, because this was important.”
On being asked about his reliability in the trial, Cohen said, “To keep the loyalty and to do the things that he had asked me to do, I violated my moral compass, and I suffered the penalty, as has my family,” Cohen said.
In the months that followed, I spoke with attorneys and my family.
“At that point in time, we didn’t even know what the southern district of New York was even looking at. And the conversation with my family was: what to do? We’re in this unique situation, never experienced. My family, my wife, my daughter, my son, all said to me: ‘Why are you holding onto this loyalty? What are you doing? We’re supposed to be your first loyalty.’”
Michael Cohen confirmed that in 2018 he learned Stormy Daniels was going to appear on shows like “60 Minutes.” At that time he heard from Eric Trump and he started to move on the temporary restraining order against Daniels to stop her from going public. Cohen says he and Larry Rosen successfully obtained a temporary restraining order against Stormy Daniels. He tried to serve the order on Daniels via her then-attorney Keith Davidson because he didn’t have an address for Daniels.
Cohen claimed the former president did not have a personal e-mail address as he feared that a paper trail could be used to prosecute him.
“He would comment that emails are like written papers, that he knows too many people who have gone down as a direct result of having emails that prosecutors can use in a case,” Cohen testified.
In his testimony, Cohen said that Trump had approved payments made to buy and then suppress news stories, including allegations he had had an affair with Playboy model Karen McDougal and a separate false claim that he had fathered a child out of wedlock.
Attorneys were at a sidebar as prosecutor Susan Hoffinger began asking Michael Cohen about a Wall Street Journal story from 2018 on American Media Inc., the payments and Cohen’s conversation with ex-National Enquirer publisher David Pecker.
“David was very concerned because it was going to affect AMI, it was going to affect him,” Cohen said. “And so I had told him I would assist with this matter, and I ultimately told him after conversations with the president, do not worry, we have this thing under control, it’s going to be taken care of.”
The lawyer says that he made a $130,000 payment to Daniels before the 2016 election to prevent her from speaking publicly about a sexual encounter she had with Trump in 2006.
Prosecutors have accused Trump of falsely labeling reimbursement payments to Cohen as legal expanses in his real estate company’s books.
Trump’s defense lawyers have argue that Cohen acted alone when paying Daniels.
Trump has been hit with 34 counts of misdemeanors and felonies over allegedly altering business records, which could land him up to four years in prison if he is convicted.
The former president has pleaded not guilty to all the charges and denies having had a sexual encounter with Daniels.
(With inputs from Agencies)
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