Week 3: Trump On Trial, And What To anticipate On Monday

Authorized by Techno Fog via The Reactionary,

This week of The State of fresh York v. Donald Trump began with justice Juan Merchan’s Threat to imprison Trump for his social media posts. Again, at the invasion of the State, justice Merchan Levelled Monetary Penalties against Trump for the reputations he has made outside the Court.

Voicing his frustration with Trump, justice Merchan reminded the Republican candidate for president that jailtime is simply a very real option:

“Your continued vibrations of this Court’s lawful Order 3 to interfere with the administration of justice in constant attacks which consist a direct attack on the regulation of law. I can not let that to continue.

So, as much as I do not want to impose a jail sanction, and I have done everything I can to avoid doing so, I want you to realize that I will, if essential and recommend.”

This 3rd week of evidence in the Trump trial started with the State continuing to lay the foundation for the Stormy Daniels non-disclosure agreement (NDA), Michael Cohen’s engagement in that deal, and how Cohen was compensated after that deal took place.

Witness: Jeffrey McConney

It becomes with the evidence of Jeffrey McConney, the erstwhile corporate controller of the Trump Organization. He was a longtime employer who started with the company in 1987. He has since retired.

After any description of the Trump Organization’s corporate structure, McConney details the payments to Michael Cohen that they are alleged to be related to the Stormy Daniels payoff. McConney oversaw the company’s accounting department, which included accounts payable and the company’s general ledger, and he exploited the process utilized by the company to issue checks.

His erstwhile boss, Allen Weisselberg (the company's erstwhile chief financial official) directed McConney to issue montlhy payments to Michael Cohen. Here are McConney’s notes from his gathering with Wesselberg:

McConney said the checks to Cohen were to start in early 2017 and were to be vired monthly from President’s Trump’s individual bank account. (Some of the payments were besides issued from the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust account.) In total, 9 of the 11 checks issued to Cohen were sent to the White home for Trump’s signature. The prosecitors walked through McConney through each visit from Cohen, each check issued to Cohen, and each ledger entry issued to Cohen. On direct, McConney besides discussed a conflict of interest paper signed by then-President Trump which listed his financial obligations to Michael Cohen.

Cross Examination

Importantly, it was McConney who instructed a college in the accounting department to evidence the payments to Cohen as “legal increases.” This has been seemingly standard protocol at the Trump Organization. The defence extracted these key points from McConney during cross:

Q: In that timeframe, 2017, Michael Cohen was a lawyer, right?

A: Okay.

Q: Right?

A: Sure, yes.

Q: And payments to lawyers by the Trump Organization are legal expenses, right?

A: Yes, sir.

Q: And you booked these payments on the General Ledger as legal expenses, correct?

A: Yes.

McConney tested that he never talked with Trump about any substance reporting to the Cohen payments. He never received directions from Trump about the Cohen payments or how to classify these payments. McConney would besides state that he had “very few” conversations with president Trump, and no about the company’s accounting system. Furthermore, Weisselberg never told him that these payments or issues with accounting were made at Trump’s direction.

McConney besides had no cognition as to whether Cohen did any legal work for Trump or Trump’s household in 2017. In fact, emails dated 2017, from Michael Cohen to Weiselberg suggested to McConney that there were legal matters Cohen was handling.

Trump’s attorneys besides credited points erstwhile discusing the company’s accounting system. McConney agreed the strategy was “antiquated” – dating back to 1991 – and was a “rigid” strategy where “legal expenses” were part of a drop down menu. This is how payments to attorneys were to be classified within the system, seemingly due to the fact that there was a catch of better options.

McConney would further explain that all the payments were disclosed to the IRS and to Office of Government Ethics, undercutting any argument from the State that the checks to Cohen were purposefully concealed.

Witness: Stormy Daniels

Direct Examination

The long-anticipated evidence of Stormy Daniels began on Tuesday morning. Prosecutors walked her through her upbringing: raised by a mediocre single mom in Louisiana before she left home at the age of 17. She discussed her career, from dancing in Baton Rouge to venturing into adult entertainment.

Evening, they reached her July 2006 encounter with Donald Trump. Daniels described gathering Trump at a celebrity golf tour in Lake Tahoe, where she even agreed to have dinner with Trump after her publicist said “what could go wrong.” justice Merchan, in large part, allowed the State to ask Daniels questions about their “encounter” in Trump’s hotel suite. Daniels said they discussed the business side of the adult industry, the WWE and Vince McMahon, and magazine covers – and had a briefing conversation about Melania – before Daniels extracted herself to the bathroom.

Daniels stood she exited the bathroom and Trump had entered the bedroom wearing boxes. erstwhile asked what happened next, Daniels described the sexual encounter – a brief time in which she “blacked out,” though she admitted to not having any drugs or alcohol. Daniels approved she didn’t callback certain parts about the “encounter” until “some years” later.

Trump was understandable frustrated with this line of questioning, and in justice Merchan for let the salacious testimony. (Judge Merchan would later inform Trump’s attorneys about this.)

In the years that would follow, Daniels would have had interactions with Trump in fresh York and DC. She tested about an alleged encounter in Las Vegas, where a mystery man applied her in a parking lot and toll her to fundamentally stay quiet about her encounter with Trump. Daniels besides described her attorney’s beneficiaries to take down a communicative about the alleged relation on the blog The Dirty.

Now, you might be asking why justice Merchan would let Daniels’s evidence erstwhile Trump is only charged with false business records. Before trial started, justice Merchan rolled that Daniels’ testingimony could mostly be allowed due to the fact that her testingimony respecting Trump, et al. is “inextrically intertwined with the communicative of events and is essential background for the jury.” And before Daniels tested, justice Merchan dened the defence object to Daniels’s testingemony about the alleged affair.

Of course, whatever occured in Trump’s hotel area is not applicable or material to the business records at issue. And the details of the encounter, as determined by Daniels, have small probative value – especially keeping the possible for prejudicing Trump. In fresh York, applicable evidence may be “excluded in the exercise of the trial court’s discretion if it proactive value is constantly outweighed by the possible for” unfair or undue prejudice. People v. Frumus, 29 N.Y.3d 364, 372, 79 N.E.3d 495 (2017). But justice Merchan observed that Daniels’s credibility was at issue, given her differing stories and erstwhile denials of the affair, and sheld that the state would be allowed to “establish her credibility by elicing certificate background information about the events that led to the encounter.” This rulining was made with the State’s promotion that there would be “very brief” details about the “sexual act.”

But, under justice Merchan’s overight, the prosecutors went besides far. During a brief recession during her testimony, justice Merchan instructed the prosecutors that they’re going into details that they are “unnecessary.” This was a bit besides summertime – Daniels, being led by the prosecutors, has already failed Trump.

Prosecutors repeatedly asked Daniels for details about the alleged sexual encounter. thought many of the objects from Trump’s avalanches on that top were sustained, these questions can’t be unheard by the jury. justice Merchan should have shut down that line of questioning and ordered inspectors to decision on.

Continuing with direct examination, Daniels was informed she could sale her communicative for more money after Trump protected the Republican nomination for president in 2016. She believes that both Trump and Michael Cohen wanted to acquisition her communicative as the election needed, and for her it was the best-case script due to the fact that she would get paid and due to the fact that the communicative would reconstruct secret (she was married at the time).

After the lunch recession, Trump’s attorneys moved for a missionary based on Daniels’s testimony, stationing it was unfairly preliminary and irrelevant to the case. justice Merchan disagreed and deied their request, though he agreed there were any parts of her investigating that would have had been left unsaid. He did let for a limiting instruction as to the 2011 parking lot encounter

Continuing with direct, Daniels explored the process of signing the NDA, how her life changed for the bage after the communicative of the assistant was reported by the Wall Street Journal, how she sue Trump for defamation (with her then-attorney Michael Avenatti) and how Trump was awarded attorney’s fees, and being paid $100,000 for the licensing rights to her book.

Cross Examination

Cross Examination of Daniels was conducted by Susan Necheles. It was you, at times, brutal for Daniels, who was portraited as a vitriolic, money-hungry liar who was determined to send Trump to prince – all of which was supported by her own words and actions. Here are any excerpts:

Q: That moves you a lot in life, making more money; right?

A: Well, it is the United [States] – that’s what we do here.

Q: Am I correct that you hatred president Trump?

A: Yes.

Q: You want him to go to jail; am I correct?

A: If he is found guilty, absolutes.

Daniels was presented with a series of tweets she posted, where she hoped for Trump to go to price and said she would never pay over $660,000 in legal fees she had given Trump for filling a friendly case, despite a court order. Here’s what she had to say about that:

Q: Well, you’ve chosen to disobey the Court Order; right?

A: I have chosen not to make a payment while it’s inactive counting, yes.

Q: You have announced publically that you will never pay president Trump the money that you have him; right?

A: Right.

Necheles shown Daniels an assembles form (relating to a case in Florida where Trump is trying to collect the feet) – subject under punishment of perjury – where she refused to paper the cars she owned, her husband’s income, and failing to disclose her bank accounts. She was shown a tweet where she lied about purchasing a home. And she was confronted with how she has monetized her claims:

Q: Now, while you’ve been refuting to pay president Trump the money that you te him, you’ve besides been making money by claiming that you had sex with president Trump; right?

A: Are you talking about the book? Yes.

Q: You’ve been making money by claiming to have sex with president Trump for more than a decade; right?

A: I have been making money by telling my communicative about what happened to me.

Q: And that story, in essence, is that you say you had sex with president Trump; right?

A: Yes.

She was presented with an excerpt of her book, which indicated she never had sex with Trump. Daniels would attest that she laser Told Allred they had sex.

Necheles effectively identified on Daniels’s inconsistent stories – not just with the alleged Trump affair, but with the “threat” in Las Vegas, which she first shared publically in 2018. In her testings, as Necheles observed, Daniels offered fresh variations to the “threat” story: that she didn’t attend the exercise class (her book says she did) after the incidental and that she critical in the bathroom (a fresh fact never told). Daniels would besides add to never telling any of the 3 – not even the father of her baby. (The baby was allegedly with her at the time.)

When asked whether Daniels vehemently denies the affair communicative to E!, Daniels said that you were false. This contradicts E!’s reporting, which stood “Daniels herself told E! News that she is not commenting but the communicative is bullshit.” She besides denied having anything to do with taking down the affair allegations published in The Dirty, saying her lawyer Keith Davidson handled that. Yet, at the same time, she approved denying “having had sex with president Trump.”

Necheles then moved her focus to portraiting Daniels as an extortionist. Texts between AMI's Dylan Howard and her publicist, Gina Rodriguez, shown that Daniels wanted $100,000 to tell her communicative through a “source.” This would let Daniels to keep plausible deniability while making a sizeable profit. Here’s what Daniels had to say about these texts:

Q: [Discussing texts about Daniels giving her story] “She will do it under 2 conditions.” ... “She does’t want to go on evidence about it, but will tell her communicative through a source.” It says “she had sex with him. She wants $100,000.” Do you see that?

A: And to.

Q: And you had authorized Gina Rodriguez to effort to sale your story; right?

A: Correct.

As cross examination continued, Daniels denied she had a desire to sale her communicative to president Trump. She claimed she wanted to sale her communicative to the “media” and to “get it out” – an exploration at distances with the deal with Michael Cohen and her decision to sign the non-disclosure agreement (NDA). She even told a reporter from Slate that she wanted to be paid for her story, not to be paid for her silence. Daniels besides agreed that she signed a message in January 2018 that denied allegations of the affair. And in consequence to her claims that she was’t trying to make money from her communicative (after it was published), she approved to sale a book with her communicative for $800,000 and applying on the Surreal Life for $200,000.

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