NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump’s former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen testified Monday earlier than a Manhattan grand jury investigating hush cash funds made on the previous president’s behalf.
A Trump loyalist turned adversary, Cohen spent round three hours answering questions within the secret continuing. He's scheduled to return once more for extra testimony Wednesday, his lawyer stated because the pair emerged from the courthouse.
“Michael has spent a protracted and productive afternoon answering all questions, all info, and utterly responsive,” stated Cohen’s lawyer, Lanny Davis.
The testimony comes at a vital time, because the Manhattan district legal professional’s workplace weighs whether or not to hunt expenses towards Trump over funds made throughout his 2016 marketing campaign to 2 girls who alleged affairs or sexual encounters with him.
Earlier than getting into the courthouse for the session, Cohen, who orchestrated these payoffs, stated his aim was merely “to inform the reality,” dismissing a suggestion that he is perhaps motivated by a want to see Trump behind bars.
“This isn't revenge,” he stated. “That is all about accountability. He must be held accountable for his soiled deeds.”
Trump denies being concerned with both of the ladies, the porn actor Stormy Daniels and mannequin Karen McDougal.
Cohen has given prosecutors proof, together with voice recordings of conversations he had with a lawyer for one of many girls, in addition to emails and textual content messages. He additionally has recordings of a dialog by which he and Trump spoke about an association to pay the opposite girl via the grocery store tabloid the Nationwide Enquirer.
Prosecutors look like whether or not Trump dedicated crimes in how the funds had been made or how they had been accounted for internally at Trump’s firm, the Trump Group.
One potential cost can be falsifying enterprise data, a misdemeanor except prosecutors might show it was executed to hide one other crime. No former U.S. president has ever been charged with against the law.
Showing Monday on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Trump lawyer Joseph Tacopina stated it's unlikely the previous president will settle for an invite, prolonged by prosecutors final week, to testify earlier than the grand jury.
“Now we have no plans on collaborating on this continuing,” Tacopina stated. “It’s a call that must be made nonetheless. There’s been no deadline set, so we’ll wait and see.”
He characterised Trump as a sufferer, saying he was pressured into making the cost to Daniels.
“This was a plain extortion and I don’t know since after we’ve determined to begin prosecuting extortion victims,” Tacopina stated. “He’s denied — vehemently denied — this affair. However he needed to pay cash as a result of there was going to be an allegation that was going to be publicly embarrassing to him, whatever the marketing campaign.”
Daniels and the legal professional who helped organize the cost for her, Keith Davidson, have each denied extorting anybody.
Talking briefly to reporters in Moline, Illinois, Trump referred to as the investigation “a giant witch hunt.” Requested if he deliberate on testifying, he stated: “I don’t know. No person’s even requested me.”
Tacopina additionally wrote a letter to New York Metropolis’s inspector normal, saying prosecutors had been attempting to hamper Trump’s possibilities in the 2024 presidential election. Tacopina requested town’s Division of Investigation to probe a “patently political prosecution.”
The Manhattan district legal professional’s workplace declined to remark.
Trump’s attorneys have tried a number of occasions to get judges in New York and Florida to intervene in or halt investigations of Trump and the Trump Group, arguing that they're politically motivated. All of these makes an attempt have failed.
Cohen served jail time after pleading responsible in 2018 to federal expenses, together with marketing campaign finance violations, for arranging the payouts to Daniels and McDougal to maintain them from going public. He has additionally been disbarred.
Trump’s attorneys might level to these elements in an try and undermine Cohen’s credibility, if the previous president is charged and Cohen finally ends up testifying at trial.
Cohen has been assembly frequently with Manhattan prosecutors in current weeks, together with a daylong session Friday to organize for his grand jury look.
The panel has been listening to proof since January in what Manhattan District Lawyer Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, has referred to as the “subsequent chapter” of his workplace’s yearslong Trump investigation. However the hush cash funds — maybe probably the most salacious of the avenues of inquiry into Trump — are acquainted floor.
Federal prosecutors and Bragg’s predecessor within the DA’s workplace, Cyrus Vance Jr., every scrutinized the funds however didn’t cost Trump.
Cohen declined to remark to reporters as he left the assembly, saying he’d be “taking a bit of little bit of time now to remain silent and permit the DA construct their case.”
Trump continued to lash out on the probe on social media on Friday, calling the case a “Rip-off, Injustice, Mockery, and Full and Whole Weaponization of Legislation Enforcement with a purpose to have an effect on a Presidential Election!”
Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 via his personal firm and was then reimbursed by Trump, whose firm logged the reimbursements as “authorized bills.”
McDougal’s $150,000 cost was made via the writer of the Nationwide Enquirer, which squelched her story in a journalistically doubtful follow often known as “catch-and-kill.”
Based on federal prosecutors who charged Cohen, the Trump Group then “grossed up” Cohen’s reimbursement for the Daniels cost for “tax functions,” giving him $360,000 plus a $60,000 bonus, for a complete of $420,000.
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