In Trump Trial, Stormy Daniels’s Lawyer Says Hush-Money Deals Swayed the 2016 Vote – The New York Times
Trump Hush-Money Trial
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“What have we done?” Keith Davidson texted a tabloid editor on election night, testifying on Thursday that it had been gallows humor.
Matthew Haag and
A defense lawyer for Donald J. Trump portrayed the lawyer who negotiated payoffs for two women who claimed to have had sex with Mr. Trump as a shady serial extortionist who has made a living trafficking in celebrity gossip and hush-money deals.
The tense cross-examination on Thursday happened after the lawyer on the stand in the former president’s criminal trial, Keith Davidson, told prosecutors about his realization on election night in 2016 that the deals to silence the women’s stories had likely influenced America’s decision to elect Mr. Trump.
During the cross-examination, the defense lawyer Emil Bove quickly sought to discredit Mr. Davidson. He accused him of toeing the line between seeking monetary settlements for his clients and extortion. And he warned Mr. Davidson that he was “not here to play lawyer games,” adding that he was seeking truthful answers.
Mr. Davidson responded: “You are getting truthful answers, sir” — sarcastically stressing the last word.
The confrontational shift in questioning appeared to rattle Mr. Davidson, who had spent two days walking the jury through the behind-the-scenes deals reached to silence the two women, Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels, in the final days of the 2016 election.
Mr. Davidson recalled sending dismayed text messages about the payments to the editor of The National Enquirer on election night. The tabloid had bought and buried Ms. McDougal’s story and participated in the negotiations for Ms. Daniels’s payment.
“What have we done?” Mr. Davidson texted the editor after Mr. Trump’s victory, a message that was read aloud in the courtroom.
Mr. Davidson said on Thursday that his text had been “gallows humor,” but added that “there was an understanding” that their “activities may have in some way assisted the presidential campaign of Donald Trump.”
Here’s how key figures involved in making hush-money payoffs on behalf of Donald J. Trump are connected.
In earlier testimony, Mr. Davidson repeatedly explained his growing frustration with Mr. Trump’s former fixer, Michael D. Cohen, who had made the $130,000 payment to Ms. Daniels to buy her silence. Mr. Trump’s reimbursements of that payment, which prosecutors said were disguised as legal expenses by the Trump Organization, are at the heart of the 34 felony charges against the former president.
Mr. Davidson said that Mr. Cohen was temperamental and needy, noting the “many, many phone calls” and “many, many text messages” he received from him, with “little regard” for his schedule. He also doubted that Mr. Cohen would come through with the payment.
Mr. Cohen did, but Ms. Daniels’s story of a sexual encounter with Mr. Trump nonetheless became public in an article in The Wall Street Journal in January 2018.
The first criminal trial of former President Donald J. Trump is underway. Take a closer look at central figures related to the case.
Text messages and emails sent and received by Mr. Davidson have underpinned his two days of testimony. On Tuesday, he discussed a sense of urgency in Mr. Trump’s campaign after the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape, on which Mr. Trump was captured discussing how he groped women, and the origin of the pseudonym intended to mask Mr. Trump’s identity in the hush-money agreement with Ms. Daniels.
Mr. Davidson had spent several hours on Tuesday laying bare the seamy ways celebrity scandal is leveraged and sold. He described the deals he negotiated on behalf of Ms. McDougal and Ms. Daniels in 2016 that buried their accounts of sexual encounters with Mr. Trump.
The name David Dennison, which he had used to identify Mr. Trump in the nondisclosure agreement involving Ms. Daniels, belonged to a high school hockey teammate, Mr. Davidson testified. In the contract, the name was abbreviated to DD, for defendant. For Ms. Daniels, he used Peggy Peterson, shortened to PP, for plaintiff.
Matthew Haag writes about the intersection of real estate and politics in the New York region. He has been a journalist for two decades. More about Matthew Haag
Michael Rothfeld is an investigative reporter in New York, writing in-depth stories focused on the city’s government, business and personalities. More about Michael Rothfeld
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