Tuesday, May 14, 2024
Year : 2, Issue : 20
Donald Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen told jurors on Monday that the Republican presidential candidate was furious that porn star Stormy Daniels was shopping a story in 2016 about an alleged sexual encounter with him, telling Cohen it would be catastrophic for his campaign.
“He said to me, ‘This is a disaster, a total disaster. Women are going to hate me,’ Cohen testified at Trump’s trial in New York state criminal court in Manhattan. “’Guys, they think it’s cool, but this is going to be a disaster for the campaign.’”
Cohen, the prosecution’s star witness, said he learned that Daniels was selling her story at a critical moment for Trump’s White House bid, after the release of an audio recording from the TV show “Access Hollywood” in which Trump bragged about grabbing women’s genitals.
The tape left the Trump campaign scrambling to contain the damage only weeks before the 2016 Election Day.
Cohen’s $130,000 payment to Daniels to buy her silence about the alleged 2006 encounter is at the centre of the case.
Prosecutors have said Trump paid Cohen back after the election and hid the reimbursement by recording it falsely as a legal retainer fee in Trump’s real estate company’s records. Trump faces 34 counts of falsifying business records tied to the reimbursement. Prosecutors say the altered records covered up election-law and tax-law violations – since the money was essentially an unreported contribution to Trump’s campaign – that elevate the crimes from misdemeanors to felonies punishable by up to four years in prison.
“He wasn’t thinking about Melania. This was all about the campaign,” Cohen said, referring to Trump’s wife. At the defense table, Trump shook his head.
Cohen added that he recalled Trump saying, “Just get past the election, because if I win it will have no relevance because I’m the president, and if I lose, I won’t really care.”
Jurors reviewed emails showing that Cohen repeatedly delayed paying Daniels. Cohen said he was trying to put off the deal until after the election at Trump’s behest.
Source: Reuters
