Donald Trump’s New York criminal trial heated up on Tuesday afternoon as Keith Davidson, former attorney for both Stormy Daniels, the adult film actor, and Karen McDougal, the former Playboy model, was questioned by prosecutors about texts in which he was asked whether Trump had cheated on his wife.
In those texts, former National Enquirer editor Dylan Howard asked Davidson: “Did he cheat on Melania?” and “Do you know if the affair was during his marriage to Melania?”
“And how did you respond to this text?” prosecutor Joshua Steinglass asked Davidson.
“‘I really cannot say yet, sorry,’” Davidson said, reading his text to Howard aloud.
Steinglass asked whether it had been because he didn’t know, or because he hadn’t been in a position to tell Howard. Davidson said: “It’s because it was the latter – I was not prepared to discuss the details at this point.”
Davidson’s testimony could be crucial in supporting prosecutors’ argument that Trump and his allies paid to stop tabloid stories about the former president’s alleged affairs with Daniels and McDougal before the 2016 election.
The trial had entered its third week on Tuesday morning with additional testimony from a private banker, Gary Farro, who last week described financial maneuvering related to the ex-president’s alleged catch-and-kill scheme for stories that could damage Trump’s reputation and election campaign if they were published.
First, however, the former president was held in contempt of court and fined $9,000 for violating a gag order. Judge Juan Merchan wrote in an order released moments after he announced the fine that Trump had been found “in criminal contempt for willfully disobeying a lawful mandate of this court … on nine separate occasions”.
Merchan warned that there could be more severe consequences if Trump continued to flout the order, which bars him from commenting on witnesses in the trial, including on social media.
“Defendant is hereby warned that the court will not tolerate continued willful violations of its lawful orders and that if necessary and appropriate under the circumstances, it will impose an incarceratory punishment,” Merchan said.
Prosecutors allege that Trump, Cohen and tabloid chief David Pecker plotted in the summer of 2015 to bury stories that could harm Trump’s GOP presidential bid. Cohen, who allegedly shuttled a $130,000 hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels, sought to open accounts in October 2016 for two new limited liability companies (LLCs).
These inquiries followed the 7 October 2016 publication of a hot-mic Access Hollywood recording in which Trump bragged about groping women and Cohen learning, a day later, that Daniels had come forward with a claim about an alleged extramarital liaison with Trump, per prosecutors.
Cohen plunked his own money into one of the LLCs, Essential Consultants, which wired money to Daniels’s lawyer so she would not go public with her account. Cohen allegedly set up LLCs to facilitate hush-money payments without the candidate’s fingerprints, as Trump’s campaign feared that additional accounts of boorish behavior could sink his chances in the general election, prosecutors have said.
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“What impact, if any, did the release of the Access Hollywood tape have on interest in Stormy Daniels’s story, so far as you were aware?” prosecutor Joshua Steinglass asked on Tuesday afternoon.
“So far as I’m aware, it had tremendous influence,” Davidson said.
After the tape surfaced, Davidson and Howard texted about Trump’s chances in the 2016 presidential election. “Trump is fucked,” Davidson said in an 8 October text.
“Wave the white flag. It’s over people!” Howard responded in another text that Davidson read aloud in court.
But Trump won the White House that November, despite the scandal. Meanwhile, Davidson also testified that in the summer of 2016 there was a meeting in Los Angeles where a story about Karen McDougal allegedly having an affair with Trump was discussed with the parent of the National Enquirer, American Media Inc (AMI).
The paper bought the rights to the story but it was agreed that it would not be published – a classic “catch and kill”. But why, Davidson was asked in court, in Manhattan?
“One explanation I was given is they were trying to build Karen into a brand and didn’t want to diminish her brand. And the second was an unspoken understanding that there was an affiliation between David Pecker and Donald Trump and that AMI wouldn’t run this story, any story related to Karen, because it would hurt Donald Trump,” Davidson said.
The court does not sit for this case on Wednesdays. The trial continues and testimony is due to resume on Thursday.