As testimony ended last week, Gary Farro, a senior managing director at the now-defunct First Republic Bank in New York, was describing how he set up an account in October 2016 for Michael Cohen, Trump’s one-time lawyer and political fixer.
Cohen has said he used the account to make the hush money payment to the film star, Stormy Daniels, two weeks ahead of the 2016 election to keep the information from voters before they headed to the polls.
Farro said Cohen funded the new account by taking money from his home equity line of credit, which Cohen has said he did so his wife would not know about the transaction. Cohen, who was convicted of campaign finance charges in connection with the payment to Daniels, has turned against his former boss and is expected to be a key witness against him.
FILE - Michael Cohen speaks to members of media as he arrives for former President Donald Trump's civil business fraud trial at New York Supreme Court, Oct. 24, 2023.
The hush money payment is at the heart of the charges Trump is facing in the first-ever criminal trial of a former U.S. president.
Prosecutors have charged Trump with falsifying 34 business records at his Trump Organization real estate conglomerate to hide reimbursement of the funds that Cohen paid to Daniels to keep her quiet. Trump says the payments were for Cohen’s legal work.
Trump has denied Daniels’ claim that they had sex at a celebrity golf tournament a decade before the election.
Trump, now the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee, also faces three other indictments encompassing an additional 54 charges, including two cases accusing him of illegally trying to upend his loss to Joe Biden four years ago. He has denied all the charges.
Because of his lawyers’ legal challenges in the other three cases, the New York trial may be the only one he faces before the 2024 election.
Testimony in the trial started last week. David Pecker, a former publisher of the National Enquirer tabloid and a long-time Trump friend, told the 12-member jury during four days of testimony that he agreed at an August 2015 meeting at Trump Tower in New York with Trump and Cohen to do whatever he could to help Trump win the presidency. Prosecutors are calling the meeting the “Trump Tower conspiracy.”
Pecker said he published favorable stories about Trump and embellished negative ones about his opponents.
More importantly, Pecker said he paid $150,000 to a Playboy model, Karen McDougal, to kill information of her claim that she had a monthslong affair with Trump in 2006 and 2007. Trump has denied the affair, but Pecker testified that Trump at one point called McDougal “a nice girl.” After he became president, Pecker said Trump asked about her well-being as he and Pecker walked the White House grounds in mid-2017.
In addition, Pecker said he paid another $30,000 to a doorman at a Trump New York property to kill his false claim that Trump had fathered an out-of-wedlock child.
Prosecutors have not publicly disclosed who their next witness will be after Farro. The trial could last another five weeks before the jury considers the case. Testimony is set for four days a week, excluding Wednesdays, but also was called off on Monday this week.
Meanwhile, the judge overseeing the case, New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, has scheduled a hearing for Thursday on whether to hold Trump in contempt of court for allegedly violating a gag order prohibiting him from assailing witnesses who could testify in the case.
Trump has denied any wrongdoing and claimed the gag order violates his right to free speech and his ability to defend himself as he runs for president again.