WASHINGTON, April 27.- Jurors in the United States will now have a three-day weekend to reflect on what they heard during the first full week of testimony in the historic hush money trial against Donald Trump.
David Pecker finally came off the stand after more than 10 hours of testimony over four days, in which the former head of American Media Inc. described in detail how he helped Trump suppress negative stories and discredit
to his rivals at the National Enquirer newspaper during the 2016 campaign.
The comings and goings surrounding Pecker’s story set the stage for new brawls to come when witnesses such as adult film star Stormy Daniels and Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer, take the stand.
On Friday afternoon, prosecutors called Rhona Graff, who was a Trump aide at the Trump Organization, where she worked for more than 30 years, CNN reported. Graff did not take long to get off the stand and then she testified to a Cohen banker, which marked progress in the trial towards the documents that constitute the core of the accusations against the former president.
The hush-pay case against Trump weaves a colorful narrative with a tabloid editor suppressing steamy affairs for a businessman-turned-politician and a hush-money scheme orchestrated by a now-disbarred lawyer.
But Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records, so prosecutors have warned that this will in many ways be a routine, document-heavy trial. Prosecutors also called a First Republic Bank banker as their third witness.
Jurors saw the paper trail for a shell company and corresponding bank account that Michael Cohen created in Delaware that was intended to be used to pay AMI for the rights to the Karen McDougal story; a transaction that never took place.
Banker Gary Farro testified about records showing that Cohen changed course about two weeks later, in October 2016, to instead open an account for another company, Essential Consultants, an entity ultimately used to pay Daniels in the hush money scheme to suppress her story about an alleged affair with Trump.
There will be no trial on Monday. Farro is expected to continue testifying next Tuesday when the trial resumes. He is expected to walk the jury through documentation tied to a home equity line of credit that Cohen used on his personal property to make payments to Daniels.
On Pecker’s final day on the stand, Trump’s lawyers sought to undermine his testimony with a series of alleged inconsistencies, highlighting discrepancies in previous interviews with federal and state prosecutors and questioning his testimony that AMI admitted he broke the law. campaign financing.
At several points during cross-examination, Trump’s lawyer, Emil Bove, asked Pecker if the testimony he had given was in error. Each time, Bove tried to highlight inconsistencies between what Pecker had told prosecutors earlier in the week and what he had told investigators in interviews years earlier about AMI’s payment to McDougal for his story in which She alleged an affair with Trump.
