Donald Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, took the stand in the Manhattan court this Monday to testify in the trial against the former president in the Stormy Daniels case. It was he who, initially, paid the $130,000 out of his own pocket to buy the silence of the porn actress. Cohen has revealed how the motivation behind that payment was to avoid “a disaster in the campaign” and not to cover up a scandal that could damage the mogul’s marriage to Melania. This fact is key to proving the prosecution’s accusation that Trump violated the electoral financing law, since the objective of the transaction that was later hidden under the concept of “legal expenses” was to avoid a scandal that could damage his image. ahead of the 2016 elections.
Cohen has explained that Trump asked him to buy Daniels’ silence to prevent her popularity from declining further among female voters. At that time, polls showed that Trump had very low acceptance among women and Trump feared that the scandal would bring him down. “Women are going to hate me,” Trump said upon learning that there was a possibility that his relationship with the actress would become public, according to the former lawyer.
The primary objective was to prevent the story from becoming known before the elections; if it was published once they had passed, it didn’t matter. “He wasn’t thinking about Melania. “It was all about the campaign,” Cohen said. This statement is also important to dismantle one of the defense’s possible arguments: that the former president bought Daniels’ story to avoid problems with Melania.
Cohen’s story is key because it affects the heart of the case: the documentary falsification that was made after Trump repaid the $130,000 to Cohen – which, plus interest and taxes, amounted to a total of $420,000 – and that registered it under the concept of “legal expenses”. This cover-up is seen as a falsification by the prosecution, which accuses Trump of 34 crimes that could cost him up to 4 years in prison.
Cohen has shown himself to the jury as a worker devoted to his boss, for whom he would do “anything” he asked of him. “The only thing that was on my mind was doing the job, making him happy,” he said. This attitude of servitude towards Trump has also been noted when the former lawyer explained that he communicated every small achievement to his boss to obtain his “recognition.” That is why he acted as his right-hand man in the plot that they devised with David Pecker, the then editor of the The National Enquirerto prevent the affairs of Trump came to light.
Cohen’s story has corroborated what Pecker, who also attended the Manhattan court as a witness, already explained three weeks ago: it was resolved with Pecker to apply the “catch and kill” to silence the Republican’s sexual scandals, in addition to the fact that the former editor was dedicated to publishing news favorable to Trump while attacking his rivals.
Payment to a playboy model
He catch and kill is the name used in the world of North American tabloids to refer to the strategy of buying the publication rights of a story and then silencing it. Cohen has related how this method was also applied with other women with whom Trump slept, such as the Playboy model Karen McDougal. McDougal also tried to leak her meeting with Trump to the press, but she was bought off.
How the purchase of this publication was conceived is an example of how the plot designed to cover up the former president’s sexual scandals worked. The main objective was that the payments to buy the silence of the women who had slept with Trump were not linked to any records of the Trump Organization. “If we do it [el pago] from a Trump entity, that defeats the purpose, because the goal is not to have Trump’s name related to this,” explained Allen Weisselberg, director of the Trump Organization, as Cohen recalled. Weisselberg is currently in prison after admitting that he lied to investigators looking into Trump’s business practices.
Last week, Daniels herself testified, in addition to narrating her sexual encounter with the magnate, she also explained how Cohen and Trump approached her to buy her story. Daniels’ lawyer was the one who was in contact with Cohen to agree to the payment of $130,000 and in fact during this Monday’s session various text messages were shown that both legal representatives exchanged to negotiate the transaction.
The trial in the Stormy Daniels case is the only one of the four criminal trials that has managed to take place and is probably the only one that will have a verdict before the elections on November 5. The other three cases (that of the attempted electoral fraud in Georgia, that of the Mar-A-Lago papers and that of the attempted assault on the Capitol) remain frozen due to Trump’s defense strategy of flooding the courts with motions.
