Associated Press
Donald Trump faces the prospect of additional sanctions in his hush money trial as he returns to court for another contempt hearing followed by testimony from a lawyer who represented two women who have said they had sexual encounters with the former President.
The testimony from attorney Keith Davidson is seen as a vital building block for the prosecution’s case that Trump and his allies schemed to bury unflattering stories in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election. He is one of multiple key players expected to be called to the stand in advance of prosecutors’ star witness, Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and personal fixer.
Prosecutors are seeking $1,000 fines for each of four comments by Trump that they say violated a judge’s gag order barring him from attacking witnesses, jurors and others closely connected to the case. Such a penalty would be on top of a $9,000 fine that Judge Juan M. Merchan imposed on Tuesday related to nine separate gag order violations that he found.
It was not immediately clear when Merchan might rule on the request for fresh sanctions, but the prospect of further punishment underscores the challenges Trump the presidential candidate is facing in adjusting to the role of criminal defendant subject to rigid courtroom protocol that he does not control. It also remains to be seen whether any rebuke from the court will lead Trump to adjust his behavior given the campaign trail benefit he believes he derives from painting the case as politically motivated.
During a one-day break from the trial on Wednesday, Trump kept up his condemnation of the case, though stopped short of comments that might run afoul of the gag order.
“There is no crime,” he told supporters in Waukesha, Wisconsin. “I have a crooked judge, is a totally conflicted judge.”
The trial, now in its second week of testimony, exposed the underbelly of tabloid journalism practices and the protections, for a price, afforded to Trump during his successful run for president in 2016.
The case concerns hush money paid to squelch embarrassing stories, including from a porn actor and a former Playboy model, and reimbursements by Trump that prosecutors say were intentionally fraudulent and designed to conceal the true purpose of the payments and to interfere in the election.
The former publisher of the National Enquirer, David Pecker, testified last week that he offered to be the “eyes and ears” of the Trump campaign and described in detail his role in purchasing a sordid tale from a New York City doorman that was later determined to not be true as well as accusations of an extramarital affair with former Playboy model Karen McDougal.
The goal was to prevent the stories from getting out, a concern that was especially pointed in the aftermath of the disclosure of a 2005 “Access Hollywood” recording in which he was heard describing grabbing women without their permission.
A separate $130,000 payment was made by Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and personal fixer, to porn actor Stormy Daniels, to prevent her claims of a 2006 sexual encounter with Trump from surfacing.
Trump’s company then reimbursed Cohen and logged the payments to him as legal expenses, prosecutors have said in charging the former President with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records — a charge punishable by up to four years in prison.
Returning to the stand will be Keith Davidson, a lawyer who represented both Daniels and McDougal in their negotiations with the National Enquirer and Cohen.
He testified that he arranged a meeting at his Los Angeles office during the summer of 2016 to see whether the tabloid’s parent company, American Media, was interested in McDougal’s story. At first, they demurred, saying she “lacked documentary evidence of the interaction,” Davidson testified.
But the tabloid at Pecker’s behest eventually bought the rights, and Davidson testified that he understood — and McDougal preferred — it would never be published. One reason for that, he said, is that there was an “unspoken affiliation” between Pecker and Trump and a desire by the company that owned the Enquirer to not publish stories that would hurt Trump.
The morning will begin with another gag order hearing. The four statements at issue were made by Trump before Merchan warned on Tuesday that additional violations could result in jail time.
They include comments to reporters and in interviews assailing Cohen’s integrity.
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Republished with permission of The Associated Press.
10 comments
Tom
May 2, 2024 at 7:38 am
The trump campaign – spend all day napping in court then all night gaslighting supporters so they send in more money to pay for his lawyers. Maybe they should do a My Cousin Vinny on him and throw him in jail overnight so he can get some sleep.
Impeach Biden
May 2, 2024 at 8:00 am
Well we know the current CIC is sleeping on the job 24/7. Just look at what is going on now around the country. Add this to his list of failures as he continues to distance himself from Jimmy Carter as the most inept President in modern history. Again Jimmy Carter thanks the American people everyday.
Tom
May 2, 2024 at 8:50 am
Well just ask trump to pronounce “infrastructure”. 🙂
As an aside, your comment makes no sense:
Current CIC sleeping on the job – apparently, they both do.
Look what’s going on around the country – stuff, same as always.
Add this to list of failures – yes, not to mention successes. Kind of like every President since the founding of the Republic.
Jimmy Carter? You seem obsessed with him. Not sure why or who else cares.
rick whitaker
May 2, 2024 at 10:02 pm
HOWLER MONKEY wtf, your comment was a mental meltdown. i guess i forgot you are a howler monkey.
Biden is Inept
May 2, 2024 at 8:38 am
Joe Biden’s and the Democrats America.
Watching the police put an end to the nonsense at UCLA. Everyone of those agitators should be documented and held accountable for their actions. I will not pay for their student loans. They are all going nowhere in life and headed back to mom and dad’s basement. To the students here on visas and burning the US flag, then you are on an airplane out of here. I salute the Frat Boys from UNC that stood up to those idiots. Back in my day we handled the same situation on my college campus during the Iran hostage crisis.
Biden is Inept
May 2, 2024 at 8:42 am
Oh and by the way make those punks clean up the mess they made. No free ride for Biden’s Democrats. Looks like a b7nch of them made a road trip from Portland.
Dont Say FLA
May 2, 2024 at 11:00 am
Speaking of inept, you posted a comment about protests at UCLA onto a story about Trump’s judicial malfeasance. Twice.
rick whitaker
May 2, 2024 at 3:41 pm
BIDEN IS GREAT, SOUNDS LIKE YOU LIKE VIOLENCE AND DON’T RESPECT CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS
PeterH
May 2, 2024 at 11:29 am
Because of Trump’s ongoing court delay tactics ….. we will be seeing this Klown in court for the next four years.
Independent voters will not be entertaining another four years of the Trump White House circus.
Dont Say FLA
May 2, 2024 at 7:15 pm
The hilariousness of this Trump trial is the morons could have done all of it entirely within the bounds of law, except they didn’t stop to think how to do it.
Rather than think “Hey, let’s create a Super PAC for all our dirty money and dirty laundry,” they did what creatures of habit will always do.
They did the same old thing they did last time and the time before and the time before that etc etc etc.
They cooked the business books when all they ever had to do was make a Super PAC.
And why? Because cooking the books always worked before, so why think of a different way to handle the same old problems now? Why fix what they thought wasn’t broke?
Trouble was, their method was always broken but it worked because nobody ever cared about moron Donald J Trump, the only person ever to bankrupt a casino. He was never anything more than a punch line for New Yorkers.
But then his little pond bigger than he could handle. The other fish were WAY bigger.
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