Jury hears tape of Trump and Cohen discussing hush-money deal

NEW YORK — Two voices reverberated in the courtroom. The first was loud, deep and unctuous, the second was casual — until money came up. They were discussing a deal made during the 2016 presidential campaign to silence a woman who claimed to have had an extramarital affair with the Republican candidate.

The first voice on the recording belonged to Michael Cohen, a former personal lawyer and fixer for Donald Trump. The second was the candidate himself, Trump, who Thursday sat mutely as jurors heard his words.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office used the tape, surreptitiously made by Cohen, to bring the trial’s two main characters together for the first time. The recording vividly captured how Cohen reported details of a key transaction to his then boss.

On it, Cohen discusses a hush-money deal that the parent company of The National Enquirer made on Trump’s behalf with former Playboy model Karen McDougal, as well as the question of how to deal with “the financing” of the supermarket tabloid’s publisher, David Pecker.

“What financing?” Trump asked, suddenly snapping to attention. (Pecker, the jurors already know, was never repaid.)

The existence of the recording, made by Cohen about two months before the election, was previously known. But it demonstrated for the jury the direct involvement of the future president in what prosecutors have said was a conspiracy to help him get elected.

It capped another remarkable day in the first criminal trial of an American president. As the second week of testimony has moved along, the proceeding has doubled as an autopsy not only of the politics of 2016 but also of the celebrity-obsessed digital media environment in which Trump rose to prominence.

On Thursday, prosecutors concluded their questioning of Keith Davidson, a Los Angeles lawyer who had a niche practice representing people with often salacious claims against celebrities.

In 2016, Davidson represented Stormy Daniels, a porn actor who had threatened to go public with a damaging story about Trump shortly before that year’s election. The 34 felony charges against Trump, who is facing a penalty of up to four years in prison, stem from that payment, which was made by Cohen. Prosecutors say the former president later sought to disguise reimbursements to his former fixer, which were made after Trump became president.

On the stand, Davidson read aloud a two-word text message that he had sent in 2016: “Funds received.”

Those innocuous words marked something momentous: the first time that jurors have seen direct evidence of the hush-money payment to Daniels.

A defense lawyer, Emil Bove, in a furious cross-examination, painted a suddenly red-faced Davidson as a serial extortionist. He accused Davidson of shaking down the Trump campaign, as Bove said he had other celebrities, including a reality television star who calls herself Tila Tequila and actor Charlie Sheen.

Davidson said that during this period he had familiarized himself with extortion law. Bove asked whether he had done so in order to better extract money from his targets while avoiding law enforcement.

“You did everything you could to get as close to that line as possible without crossing it, right?” Bove said.

“I did everything I could to make sure that my activities were lawful,” Davidson replied.

Davidson began the day by describing his unpleasant relationship with Cohen and the former fixer’s fevered efforts to keep allegations of extramarital affairs by Trump out of the public eye. Those efforts included discussions with Davidson about how Daniels should respond to a report about the January 2018 deal in The Wall Street Journal.

Daniels said then she had no “sexual and/or romantic affair” with the president, and on the stand, Davidson took pains to explain why that was “technically true.” He said that the one-night stand in a Lake Tahoe hotel in Nevada, which Trump denies occurred, was not romantic.

A prosecutor, Joshua Steinglass, asked whether Davidson intended that statement “to be cleverly misleading.”

“I don’t understand the question,” Davidson said, before adding that he would never use the term “hush money” for the money that was received. He said he preferred “consideration.”

According to Bove, Davidson often sought to turn scandal to his and his clients’ financial advantage. Topics of discussion Thursday included sex tapes by figures like Tila Tequila and Hulk Hogan, the wrestler. There was talk of stints in rehab by actress Lindsay Lohan and an attempt to shake down Sheen.

Davidson repeatedly clashed with Bove, who accused him of obscuring the truth by failing to supply specifics.

“I’m not here to play lawyer games with you,” Bove said. “I’m just asking for truthful answers.”

“You’re getting truthful answers, sir,” Davidson shot back, putting a sarcastic spin on the final word.

After Davidson left the stand, a forensic analyst who works for the district attorney’s office took the stand and soon introduced the recording of Trump and Cohen kibitzing about the payment to McDougal.

In another recording that was played while Davidson was on the stand, jurors heard Cohen say in 2017 that Trump hated “the fact that we did it.”

Davidson explained that Trump had been referring to the payment to Daniels, providing a boost to the prosecutors seeking to corroborate Trump’s knowledge of and involvement in the deal.

As he did when he first took the stand Tuesday, Davidson spent much of the day denigrating Cohen, describing him as aggressive, unpleasant and occasionally unhinged. He testified about Cohen’s despondency after the 2016 election, when he learned Trump was not planning to include him in the administration.

“I can’t believe I’m not going to Washington,” Davidson recalled Cohen saying. “I thought he was going to kill himself,” Davidson said.

Cohen in 2019 testified before Congress that he had not sought an administration job.

That contradiction and the manifold unflattering comments about Cohen could aid the defense. But prosecutors may also be hoping that airing them will remove their sting, immunizing the jury against damaging information.

They have introduced Cohen in phases: First, though remarks from people who know him, then with his voice and his picture. In coming weeks, Cohen is expected to testify. By that time, he may be a known quantity for jurors — one of whom has said he listens to Cohen’s podcast.

Trump himself has continually attacked Cohen in remarks and online posts that have been discussed at two different gag-order hearings, one of which resulted in a contempt-of-court fine of $9,000 and a warning of jail time if he persisted.

On Thursday morning, the judge, Juan M. Merchan, heard arguments about four additional statements that prosecutors say violate the order, including remarks in the hallway outside the court, where Trump has taken to attacking the case and Democrats he feels are behind it. The judge did not immediately rule.

Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, has complained vociferously about the trial, saying it is taking him off the campaign trail and baselessly suggesting that President Joe Biden orchestrated the prosecution. Other targets have included the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, who brought the case, and Merchan.

Still, Trump’s demeanor in Merchan’s courtroom has been different from other recent trials, where he has had outbursts and even stormed out. Trump has been largely subdued, often sitting with his eyes closed as testimony unspools. At some points, he has seemed to doze off.

In a post on Truth Social on Thursday afternoon, Trump denied falling asleep. “I simply close my beautiful blue eyes, sometimes, listen intensely, and take it ALL in!!!,” he wrote.

In his questioning of Davidson on Thursday, Bove, the defense lawyer, pointed out that the witness had never met or interacted with Trump.

“In fact, everything that you know about President Trump came from either TV or Michael Cohen?” he asked. Davidson conceded he had no personal interactions with Trump.

But prosecutors argue that Davidson did not have to know Trump to understand the importance of the hush-money payment in his bid for the White House.

Prosecutors asked Davidson to explain a text exchange right after Election Day in 2016 with Dylan Howard, a top editor at The National Enquirer who had helped broker the deal among Cohen, Davidson and Daniels.

“What have we done?” Davidson asked the editor.