NEW YORK — The third week of the criminal trial of Donald Trump began with a rebuke: The judge, Juan Merchan, held the former president in contempt and fined him $9,000 for repeatedly violating a gag order. He also threatened jail time if the violations continue.
That decision Tuesday, triggered by Trump’s comments on social media about witnesses and others, preceded riveting testimony from a lawyer who had arranged a $130,000 hush-money payment to conceal a tryst between Trump and a porn actor, Stormy Daniels, a sum paid weeks before the 2016 election.
The lawyer, Keith Davidson, also described an earlier deal to buy the silence of another woman, Karen McDougal, who said she’d had a longer-term affair with Trump.
Trump, 77, is charged with falsifying 34 business records to hide the payment to Daniels. He has denied the felony charges, and having had sex with Daniels and McDougal. He could face probation or prison if convicted.
Here are takeaways from the ninth day of Trump’s trial, the first prosecution of an American president:
A lawyer recounts two stories and two deals to bury them
Davidson, a Los Angeles lawyer, described in painstaking detail the pressured negotiations to pay off McDougal in summer 2016, which played out in text messages with Dylan Howard, an editor at The National Enquirer. The tabloid had agreed to buy negative stories about Trump and then bury them.
McDougal was eventually paid $150,000 and promised other perks, a deal hashed out in sometimes jocular terms.
“We are going to lay it on thick for her,” read one text from Howard.
Davidson replied: “Throw in an ambassadorship for me.”
Davidson testified that his response was a joke, but acknowledged that a deal for McDougal would help Trump’s candidacy.
In the afternoon, Davidson detailed how the arrangement with Daniels was made later that year as interest in her story increased after the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape, in which Trump bragged about groping women.
Davidson testified that he dealt with Michael Cohen, who was special counsel at the Trump Organization and who he believed was acting for the benefit of Trump.
Trump’s gag order violations haven’t cost him much. Yet
In an eight-page decision, Merchan announced Tuesday morning that Trump had repeatedly violated the March gag order that protects witnesses, court staff and others. He warned the former president that the court “will not tolerate continued violations,” raising the prospect of “an incarceratory punishment” if he continues. That means jail.
The judge also ordered Trump to remove the nine “offending posts” from his Truth Social account and his campaign website by Tuesday afternoon.
The fines, however, were a pittance for a billionaire: $9,000. Merchan acknowledged that such penalties “unfortunately will not achieve the desired result” if a person “can easily afford such a fine.”
A banker described how Cohen paid off Daniels
Cohen, who also acted as Trump’s fixer, made the $130,000 payment to Daniels, drawing money from a credit line and channeling it through a shell company. Gary Farro, who was a banker with First Republic Bank, described that monetary flow, a dry but essential part of the prosecution’s case.
The payment’s timing — less than two weeks before the 2016 presidential election — speaks to another element of the prosecution’s argument: that Trump was seeking to illegally influence voters by silencing Daniels.
During cross-examination, a defense lawyer, Todd Blanche, tried to drive home the idea that the account had no connection to Trump. Farro also told Blanche that if Cohen “had told me this was a shell corporation, the account wouldn’t have been opened.”
A parade of record keepers took the stand
Prosecutors also called several witnesses to testify about records, including a C-SPAN archivist and an official with a court reporting company. They were so-called custodial witnesses, who testify about the authenticity of basic evidence in the case, such as videos or deposition transcripts, which all came into play Tuesday.
The jury saw several video clips from 2016 in which Trump denied accusations of sexual assault. They also saw a snippet of a deposition Trump gave in another lawsuit in which he confirmed that he married Melania Trump in 2005, soon before McDougal and Daniels say they had sexual encounters with him.
Trump can go to a graduation and is hitting the road
Trump had complained about the possibility of missing his son Barron’s high school graduation on May 17, but Merchan said Tuesday that the trial would pause for it.
This week’s trial schedule has already been truncated, with Monday and Wednesday off. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, is planning rallies in Wisconsin and Michigan — both battleground states — on Wednesday.
Testimony will resume with Davidson on Thursday, with a tough cross-examination by the defense expected.