Trump’s Lawyers Turn Up the Heat – The New York Times
Trump’s Legal Troubles
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Donald Trump’s lawyers played hardball, questioning Stormy Daniels’s lawyer’s history of profiting from celebrities in embarrassing situations.
During the first two weeks of testimony in Donald Trump’s criminal trial, the defense has often turned to three Ds to counter the prosecution’s arguments: denial, downplaying and deflecting responsibility.
As the case heats up, though, Trump’s legal team has increasingly gone on the offensive, confronting prosecution witnesses head-on — a strategy that was on full display today, during a rugged cross-examination of Keith Davidson, a Los Angeles lawyer who represented Stormy Daniels.
Daniels, a porn star, was paid $130,000 by Trump’s fixer, Michael Cohen, in 2016 to ensure her silence about a single-night sexual encounter with Trump in 2006.
In two days of testimony, Davidson offered a vivid description of the deal to cover up Daniels’s story and another hush-money arrangement involving Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model who said she had a 10-month affair with Trump in 2006 and 2007. McDougal’s story was never published, part of a pattern of “catch-and-kill”: the supermarket tabloid practice of buying up negative stories and then burying them.
Davidson, a Los Angeles lawyer once known for representing people with salacious claims against celebrities, was straightforward in describing the deals. Jurors heard about emails and texts between him and Cohen, who paid $130,000 to Daniels, less than two weeks before the 2016 election. That payment underlies the 34 felony counts of falsifying business records that Trump faces, related to Cohen’s reimbursement. Trump has pleaded not guilty and denies having sex with Daniels and McDougal.
Late today, the jury heard also directly from Trump — in a way — when prosecutors played a secret recording between him and Cohen, discussing the McDougal deal. While the existence of the recording was previously known, it spoke to a central element of the prosecution’s case: that Trump was aware of what prosecutors have called a conspiracy to help him get elected.
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