A New York jury has heard more testimony in the criminal trial of former US President Donald Trump, who is accused of falsifying business records related to hush money payments in the run-up to the 2016 election.
But before the jury was seated Monday, Judge Juan Merchan fined Trump another $1,000 and sentenced him to contempt of court for a 10th time for violating a confidentiality agreement in the case.
“I do not want to impose a prison sentence and have done everything I can to avoid it. But if necessary, I will do it,” Merchan said from the bench.
Jail would be an unprecedented step in the historic trial stemming from hush-money payments made by former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen to adult film star Stormy Daniels.
Prosecutors have argued that Trump himself ordered the payments to silence Daniels, who claimed they had an extramarital affair.
Trump, who is accused of 34 felonies in the case, is accused of participating in a conspiracy to “undermine the integrity” of the 2016 presidential election by suppressing information that would have been unflattering to his campaign.
After Merchan’s verdict, jurors viewed bank records and heard testimony from two members of the Trump Organization – one a former employee, the other current – who spoke to invoices and logs related to the alleged hush money payments.
Trump, the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee for November’s presidential election, has pleaded not guilty and accused prosecutors of trying to prevent his re-election. He has also denied any sexual relationship with Daniels.
Here are five key takeaways from the 12th day of the trial.
Bank documents displayed
For the first time on Monday, jurors heard about the refunds underlying the allegations against Trump.
Former Trump Organization controller Jeffrey McConney testified about conversations he had in January 2017 with the company’s longtime chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, about reimbursing Cohen.
“Allen Weisselberg said we had to give Michael some money, we had to compensate Michael. “He threw me a pad and I started taking notes on what he said,” McConney testified. “That’s how I found out about it.”
Cohen, who had worked for the Trump Organization for about a decade, had just been removed from the payroll as an employee. However, he had paid $130,000 to attorney Keith Davidson, who represented adult film star Daniels, to buy her silence.
A bank statement presented in court showed that on October 27, 2016, Cohen paid Davidson $130,000 from an account at a shell company that Cohen had set up for that purpose.
McConney testified that Weisselberg’s handwritten notes about Cohen’s reimbursement were attached to the bank statement in the company’s files.
The notes lay out a plan to pay Cohen a base reimbursement of $180,000 – covering the payment to Davidson and an unrelated technology bill. That total amount was then doubled, or “grossed up,” to cover the state, city and federal taxes that Weisselberg estimated Cohen would pay on the payments.
According to the notes, Weisselberg then added a bonus of $60,000, for a total of $420,000.
The reimbursement payments were listed as legal fees, which prosecutors say underscores their claim that Trump falsified business records.
Payments were made from Trump’s account, McConney says
After the first two reimbursement checks were paid to Cohen through a trust fund, the remaining checks – covering payments from April to December 2017 – were paid from Trump’s personal account, McConney also testified.
Because Trump is the sole signatory of that White House account, changing the funding source required “a whole new process for us,” McConney said.
McConney’s own notes were also shown in court. After calculating that Cohen would receive $35,000 per month for 12 months, McConney wrote, “Transfer monthly from DJT.”
When asked what that meant, McConney replied: “It was from the president’s personal bank account.”
McConney’s testimony also touched on an important part of the case: how and why Cohen’s reimbursement of the Daniels payment was recorded as legal fees. He stated that he had instructed an accounting employee to do this.
All expenses had to be entered into the general ledger with a category code, and McConney instructed the accounting team to enter the code for legal expenses: 51505.
“We paid a lawyer,” McConney said of Cohen on Monday.
Under cross-examination later in the day, McConney admitted that Trump never directed him to record Cohen’s payments as legal fees, nor did Weisselberg say Trump had wanted them to be listed that way.
Trump’s lawyer Emil Bove also pointed out that Cohen is a lawyer and that “payments to lawyers are legal costs.”
Trump’s team argued that there was nothing illegal about the way Cohen was paid.
Another Trump Organization employee testifies
Prosecutors also called Deborah Tarasoff, the Trump Organization’s accounts payable clerk, to the stand Monday afternoon.
Tarasoff received an email in 2017 in which McConney asked her to “charge” the reimbursement payments to Cohen “to legal costs.” She prepared the checks that paid the former Trump lawyer.
Tarasoff testified about the process by which the checks used to reimburse Cohen were issued.
Most of the checks were paid from Trump’s personal account and signed by him at the White House, she said. She added that the checks would then be returned with Trump’s Sharpie signature.
“I would take it apart, mail the check and file the backup copy,” she said, meaning placing the bill in the Trump Organization’s filing system.
Two other checks presented in court came from Trump’s revocable trust fund, which was used to manage his assets during his time as president.
It bore the signatures of two trustees: Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. and Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s longtime chief financial officer.
The checks were recorded in internal records as legal fees under a retention agreement. Prosecutors allege the payments were mislabeled to conceal Cohen’s refund and the underlying hush money payment.
Judge imposes another fine on Trump
The $1,000 fine imposed on Trump on Monday was the 10th such punishment for violating a court-ordered gag order that prohibits the ex-president from making comments to jurors, witnesses and family members of court employees could interfere in the case.
But in imposing the fine, Judge Merchan noted that the nine previous fines of $1,000 each did not appear to prevent Trump from violating the confidentiality agreement.
“It appears that the $1,000 fines are not acting as a deterrent. Therefore, this court will have to consider a prison sentence in the future,” Merchan told Trump and his defense team.
The judge also stressed that a prison sentence is “really a last resort” because it could disrupt the trial and impact Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign.
But Merchan added that Trump’s “sustained, willful” violations of the gag order constituted a “direct attack on the rule of law.”
The latest violation stemmed from an interview Trump gave to a right-wing broadcaster on April 22 in which he criticized the composition of the jury. “This jury was chosen so quickly – 95 percent Democrats. “The area is predominantly Democratic,” Trump said.
As Trump spoke to reporters outside the courtroom on Monday, he continued to strike a defiant tone.
“It’s a ridiculous case, I did nothing wrong – absolutely nothing wrong,” Trump said, accusing the judge of depriving him of his “constitutional rights” with the gag order. “He took away my constitutional right to speak.”