Cohen testified Monday that the payment was to keep Daniels from talking about an alleged 2006 sexual encounter with Trump, and that Trump disguised reimbursements to Cohen as legal fees.
Cohen spent hours on the witness stand Monday in a New York courtroom testifying against his former boss in the first-ever criminal trial of a U.S. president.
Trump is accused in a 34-count indictment of falsifying business records at his Trump Organization real estate conglomerate to make it look like payments to Cohen in 2017 were for legal work instead of a repayment for the hush money he sent to Daniels just as voters were heading to the polls for the election eight years ago.
In gripping testimony, Cohen told the 12-member jury that Trump authorized the payment in a meeting just ahead of the election. At the time, the Trump campaign had become aware that Daniels was looking to sell her account of sex with Trump at a 2006 celebrity golf tourney or be paid to stay quiet.
Cohen quoted Trump as saying, "'There’s no reason to keep this thing out there, just do it.' So, he expressed to me, ‘Just do it.’”
Trump allegedly told Cohen to work out the details with Allen Weisselberg, then the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer, to "figure this whole thing out.”
Cohen said that after he and Weisselberg devised a plan on how to pay Daniels and that Cohen would then be reimbursed, they told Trump and he said, “Good, good.”
Cohen said he paid Daniels the hush money out of his personal home equity line of credit and would not have made the payment on his own without Trump’s approval.
After the election, Cohen testified, Trump again assured him he would be repaid.
Just days before Trump was inaugurated as the country’s 45th president in January 2017, Cohen said he and Weisselberg met with Trump at his Trump Tower office in New York and the agreement for the reimbursement was finalized.
Prosecutor Susan Hoffinger asked Cohen whether this was payment for future legal services.
"That was what it was designed to be," Cohen said.
"What was it actually?" Hoffinger asked.
"Reimbursement of my money," Cohen said.
Trump, with his eyes often closed, listened to his one-time aide’s detailed account of how he made the payment to Daniels. It was one of three hush money deals Cohen orchestrated to bury salacious claims people made about Trump in the weeks before he narrowly won the 2016 election over Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Cohen described how since the early 2000s, he bullied people on behalf of Trump, doing whatever “the boss” of the Trump Organization wanted.
But Cohen, 57, is a flawed witness for the prosecution and is sure to face a withering cross-examination, with Trump’s team certain to cast him as a convicted liar not to be believed.
Cohen pleaded guilty to a campaign finance violation in connection with the hush money payment to Daniels and other offenses, including perjury by lying to a congressional panel about a prospective Trump development in Moscow.
Cohen served 13½ months in a federal prison and another year and a half in home confinement. He also was disbarred as an attorney.
