By MICHAEL R. SISAK (Associated Press)
NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump’s former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen testified Monday earlier than a Manhattan grand jury investigating hush cash funds made on the previous president’s behalf.
A Trump loyalist turned adversary, Cohen spent round three hours answering questions within the secret continuing. He is scheduled to return once more for extra testimony Wednesday, his lawyer mentioned because the pair emerged from the courthouse.
“Michael has spent a long and productive afternoon answering all questions, all facts, and completely responsive,” mentioned Cohen’s lawyer, Lanny Davis.
The testimony comes at a vital time, because the Manhattan district legal professional’s workplace weighs whether or not to hunt expenses towards Trump over funds made throughout his 2016 marketing campaign to 2 girls who alleged affairs or sexual encounters with him.
Before coming into the courthouse for the session, Cohen, who orchestrated these payoffs, mentioned his objective was merely “to tell the truth,” dismissing a suggestion that he may be motivated by a want to see Trump behind bars.
“This is not revenge,” he mentioned. “This is all about accountability. He needs to be held accountable for his dirty deeds.”
Trump denies being concerned with both of the ladies, the porn actor Stormy Daniels and mannequin Karen McDougal.
Cohen has given prosecutors proof, together with voice recordings of conversations he had with a lawyer for one of many girls, in addition to emails and textual content messages. He additionally has recordings of a dialog through which he and Trump spoke about an association to pay the opposite girl by the grocery store tabloid the National Enquirer.
Prosecutors look like whether or not Trump dedicated crimes in how the funds have been made or how they have been accounted for internally at Trump’s firm, the Trump Organization.
One doable cost could be falsifying enterprise data, a misdemeanor except prosecutors might show it was finished to hide one other crime. No former U.S. president has ever been charged with a criminal offense.
Appearing Monday on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Trump lawyer Joseph Tacopina mentioned it’s unlikely the previous president will settle for an invite, prolonged by prosecutors final week, to testify earlier than the grand jury.
“We have no plans on participating in this proceeding,” Tacopina mentioned. “It’s a decision that needs to be made still. There’s been no deadline set, so we’ll wait and see.”
He characterised Trump as a sufferer, saying he was pressured into making the cost to Daniels.
“This was a plain extortion and I don’t know since when we’ve decided to start prosecuting extortion victims,” Tacopina mentioned. “He’s denied — vehemently denied — this affair. But he had to pay money because there was going to be an allegation that was going to be publicly embarrassing to him, regardless of the campaign.”
Daniels and the legal professional who helped organize the cost for her, Keith Davidson, have each denied extorting anybody.
Speaking briefly to reporters in Moline, Illinois, Trump known as the investigation “a big witch hunt.” Asked if he deliberate on testifying, he mentioned: “I don’t know. Nobody’s even asked me.”
Tacopina additionally wrote a letter to New York City’s inspector common, saying prosecutors have been attempting to hamper Trump’s possibilities within the 2024 presidential election. Tacopina requested town’s Department of Investigation to probe a “patently political prosecution.”
The Manhattan district legal professional’s workplace declined to remark.
Trump’s attorneys have tried a number of occasions to get judges in New York and Florida to intervene in or halt investigations of Trump and the Trump Organization, arguing that they’re politically motivated. All of these makes an attempt have failed.
Cohen served jail time after pleading responsible in 2018 to federal expenses, together with marketing campaign finance violations, for arranging the payouts to Daniels and McDougal to maintain them from going public. He has additionally been disbarred.
Trump’s attorneys might level to these elements in an try to undermine Cohen’s credibility, if the previous president is charged and Cohen finally ends up testifying at trial.
Cohen has been assembly frequently with Manhattan prosecutors in latest weeks, together with a daylong session Friday to arrange for his grand jury look.
The panel has been listening to proof since January in what Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, has known as the “next chapter” of his workplace’s yearslong Trump investigation. But the hush cash funds — maybe essentially the most salacious of the avenues of inquiry into Trump — are acquainted floor.
Federal prosecutors and Bragg’s predecessor within the DA’s workplace, Cyrus Vance Jr., every scrutinized the funds however didn’t cost Trump.
Cohen declined to remark to reporters as he left the assembly, saying he’d be “taking a little bit of time now to stay silent and allow the DA build their case.”
Trump continued to lash out on the probe on social media on Friday, calling the case a “Scam, Injustice, Mockery, and Complete and Total Weaponization of Law Enforcement in order to affect a Presidential Election!”
Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 by his personal firm and was then reimbursed by Trump, whose firm logged the reimbursements as “legal expenses.”
McDougal’s $150,000 cost was made by the writer of the National Enquirer, which squelched her story in a journalistically doubtful observe often called “catch-and-kill.”
According to federal prosecutors who charged Cohen, the Trump Organization then “grossed up” Cohen’s reimbursement for the Daniels cost for “tax purposes,” giving him $360,000 plus a $60,000 bonus, for a complete of $420,000.
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Associated Press author Jill Colvin contributed to this report.
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Follow Michael Sisak on Twitter at twitter.com/mikesisak and ship confidential suggestions by visiting https://www.ap.org/tips/.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”
