It was a tabloid writer’s dream to write about The People v. Donald J. Trump because it was full of sexy testimony, hush money payments, political intrigue, and backroom power struggles.
Both the prosecution and the defense rested their cases on Tuesday, the last day of the trial. Closing arguments are set for early next week. The case will then likely be given to the jury, who will decide if the scandalous details are enough to find Trump guilty. If they do, he would be the first former president to be found guilty of a crime and could go to prison.
Trump, who is 77 years old, was accused of breaking the law by hiding payments he made to people who said he had affairs in order to keep damaging information from getting out before the 2016 presidential election.
The case was mostly about a $130,000 payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels, who tried to sell her story about having a sexual encounter with Trump. He said there was no such thing as an affair and that the case was politically motivated by the Democrat who was the Manhattan District Attorney, Alvin Bragg.
Even though the trial didn’t seem to change much about American politics—Trump is still the Republican Party’s front-runner for president in November and is polling very well—it did have a lot of exciting moments.
In Trump’s hush-money trial, these six events shocked everyone the most.
Stormy’s sexy turn on the stand
Trump was sitting just feet away in the courtroom as Stormy Daniels told shocking details about her alleged affair with the former president at a golf tournament for celebrities in 2006.
In her graphic testimony, the adult film star said that Trump spanked her with a magazine that was rolled up, and that he greeted her in his hotel room wearing silk pajamas and then took off all of his clothes as she came out of the bathroom.
Daniels also said she had sex with Trump without protection. She knew there was a “power imbalance” in the hotel room, but she made it clear that they both wanted to have sex.
It’s not that the details Daniels gave about the meeting were essential to the prosecution’s case, but they got the most attention.
Daniels was asked to testify about how Trump’s lawyer at the time, Michael Cohen, paid her $130,000 to keep quiet about the story just weeks before the 2016 election. At the heart of the prosecution’s case are Trump’s payments to Cohen and the changes that were made to the ledger to hide them.
During cross-examination, Trump’s lawyers said that Daniels had tried to blackmail Trump, which she strongly denied.
When Daniels’s time was up, Trump’s lawyers asked the judge to throw out the trial, saying that the graphic details would only “inflame” the jury and make them dislike him more. Judge Juan Merchan said, “There were probably some things that would have been better left unsaid,” but he still turned down the request.
Legal experts have said that if Trump is found guilty, Daniels’ testimony could be used as a reason for him to appeal the verdict.
Cohen talks about how Trump was worried about women voters
Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, was without a doubt the most important witness in the case. He said that Trump thought Daniels’ story could have hurt his chances of winning the election.
Cohen said that Trump told him that Daniels’ story going public would be a “disaster” for his campaign because he was losing support from women and had just been heavily criticized for making sexist comments off-camera in an interview with Access Hollywood.
“This is a disaster, a total disaster,” he told me. Women are going to dislike me. Cohen said in court, “Guys, they think it’s cool, but this is going to be terrible for the campaign.”
Cohen had been Trump’s go-to guy for years to solve problems. He told the police that he helped the National Enquirer hide potentially damaging stories about Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and then made the key payment to Daniels. This was the basis of the prosecution’s case.
Cohen talked to Trump in the Oval Office about how he would get paid back for the money he gave to Daniels. He said that over the course of a year, he was given a dozen checks that were supposed to be for legal services but were actually payment for the money he had given to Daniels.
The charges against Trump for falsifying business records were based on these checks.
Cohen publicly criticized Trump after pleading guilty to federal charges related to the Daniels payoff in 2018. Because he spoke out against the former president so much, Cohen was a difficult witness to use in the case.
Trump’s lawyers tried to show that Cohen was angry and wanted to get back at Trump in his testimony by bringing up the fact that Cohen had a history of lying. Cohen stuck to his story and said he was telling the truth.
Cohen said on the stand, “I feel bad about doing things for him that I shouldn’t have.” “Lying and picking on people to get what they want.” I’m glad I worked for the Trump Organization. I already said that it was a very interesting and fun time. But I broke my moral compass to be loyal and do what he asked of me, and I paid for it.
A dinner at the White House to say thanks
David Pecker, who used to be the publisher of the National Enquirer, spoke first. He talked about how interested Trump was in the details of the alleged cover-up, even after he won the election.
He said that Trump asked him to a dinner at the White House to thank him for his help just a few months after taking office. At one point, he said Trump asked about Karen McDougal, who used to be a Playboy model.
“What’s up with Karen?” Trump said something as they walked from the Oval Office to the dining room, passing by the Rose Garden.
Pecker said in court, “I said she’s doing well, she’s quiet, and everything is going well.”
Through his testimony, Pecker showed how the supermarket tabloid found scandals and then tried to hide them.
Pecker talked about how he had made a deal with Trump and Cohen to be the “eyes and ears” of Trump’s campaign and find any stories that could hurt Trump and then tell Cohen about them.
The tabloid publisher talked about how the Enquirer found three stories—one from a Trump building doorman, one from McDougal, and one from Daniels—that Trump had affairs and even fathered a child without being married.
Pecker talked about how the Enquirer bought the rights to the stories that the doorman and McDougal were shopping around but never ran. This is a common tactic used by tabloids and is called “catch-and-kill.” Even though the tabloid didn’t believe the doorman’s story about the child, he said, they paid him $30,000 and McDougal $150,000.
In Daniels’s case, Pecker said that the Enquirer had decided not to buy the rights to her story because the lawyers for the tabloid thought it might be seen as an illegal campaign donation. Pecker said that he told Cohen that he should buy the story himself.
As Pecker told the jury, “I told Michael, ‘My advice is that you should buy the story and take it off the market. If you don’t and it gets out, I think the boss will be very angry with you.'”
During cross-examination, Pecker admitted that he had known Trump for a long time and had worked to change or get rid of negative stories about him before he ran for office.
Make the court clear
The craziest thing that happened in court was right at the end, when Trump’s defense called their second witness, Robert Costello. Costello is a lawyer who used to work with Cohen and who the defense thought could call into question parts of Cohen’s testimony.
Right away there were problems because the defense had not named Costello as a possible witness. This made the prosecutors angry and made Judge Merchan angry as well.
Costello was allowed to continue, and he told the judge that Cohen had told him soon after the FBI searched his apartment that he didn’t know anything that linked Trump to the payments.
Costello, on the other hand, made Merchan very angry by talking over the judge and clearly showing disappointment when Merchan let prosecutors raise objections.
Costello could be heard sighing loudly and rolling his eyes in response to the judge’s orders at times. He also said things like “ridiculous” and “jeez.” That made Merchan kick Costello out of the room with the jury and scold him.
Mechan told Costello, “If you don’t like my decision, you don’t say ‘jeez’ when there’s a witness on the stand.” “You don’t look at me funny or roll your eyes.”
Rosso gave the judge a long stare, and Merchan asked, “Are you staring me down?”
At that point, the judge told the reporters to leave the courtroom. Later, transcripts showed that Merchan had said he would take Costello off the stand and not let him testify.
Merchan told them, “I’m letting you know that your behavior is unacceptable.” “You will be taken off the stand if you try to stare me down one more time.”
In the end, Costello calmed down, and his testimony could go on.
Specifics of the contracts
Early in the trial, a lawyer who negotiated the settlements for Daniels and McDougal gave very helpful testimony.
Keith Davidson, a lawyer in Los Angeles who specialized in handling potentially embarrassing celebrity stories, talked about how long it took him, Cohen, and the National Enquirer to reach a deal that kept Daniels’ and McDougal’s stories secret.
He said that the contracts said the women would have to pay $1 million if they told anyone else about their stores.
He said that he was shocked when Trump was elected and that the efforts to hide the women’s stories had worked.
He said, “There was an understanding that our activities may have helped Donald Trump’s campaign for president in some way.”
After the Wall Street Journal published details of the deals, Davidson also talked about how Cohen and the Trump camp were trying harder and harder to fix the problems.
“I think I had a contractual duty to let them know that something was about to be published,” Davidson said in court about what he did after the Journal asked him for comment.
He said Cohen told him to write a “strong” response denying “everything.” He did, but Daniels later took back the statement Davidson had made denying the affair.
Trump’s time in court
Even though there were fireworks on the stand, Trump sat at the defense table and raged for most of the trial.
Because the former president had been criticizing the judge, the prosecutors, and even some of the witnesses in the case in public, he was told not to say anything during the trial.
But that didn’t stop Trump, and he often used social media to attack some of the people involved in the trial. Merchan found Trump twice in contempt of court for his outbursts in the media and online. He fined Trump $10,000 and even said he might put Trump in jail if he kept doing it.
Trump would talk to the media in the court hallway during almost every break in the trial. He would say that the proceedings were part of a political witch hunt after each break.
There were times during the trial when Trump would sit quietly with his eyes closed, which led to rumors that he had passed out. In the end, he chose not to testify in the trial.
