By MICHAEL R. SISAK, JENNIFER PELTZ, ERIC TUCKER and JAKE OFFENHARTZ (Associated Press)
NEW YORK (AP) — The judge in charge of Donald Trump’s hush money trial fined him $1,000 on Monday and warned him about potential jail time if he violates the gag order again while jurors were hearing testimony about the financial reimbursements at the heart of the case.
The testimony from Jeffrey McConney, the former Trump Organization controller, gave a detailed account of how the company repaid payments meant to keep embarrassing stories from coming out during the 2016 presidential campaign, and then recorded them as legal expenses in a way that Manhattan prosecutors said broke the law.
McConney’s testimony came as the landmark criminal trial, the first involving a former American president, entered its third week. His account has not had the emotional impact seen Friday with longtime Trump aide Hope Hicks, but it provided an important piece of evidence for the prosecutors trying to reveal the transactions meant to protect Trump’s presidential bid during a critical time in the race.
After McConney's testimony, Judge Juan M. Merchan warned that further violations of a gag order preventing Trump from making inflammatory comments outside the court about witnesses, jurors, and others tied to the case might lead to jail time.
The $1,000 fine on Monday was the second time Trump had been punished for breaking the gag order since the trial started last month. He was fined $9,000 last week, $1,000 for each of nine violations.
“It looks like the $1,000 fines are not stopping him. So, in the future, this court may have to consider a jail punishment,” Merchan said before the jurors entered the courtroom. The judge added that Trump’s statements “threaten to interfere with the fair administration of justice and constitute a direct attack on the rule of law. I cannot allow that to continue.”
Trump sat forward in his seat, glaring at the judge when the ruling was delivered. When the judge finished speaking, Trump shook his head twice and crossed his arms.
Despite the warning about potential jail time, Merchan also expressed his reluctance about taking such a serious step, describing it as a “last resort.”
“The last thing I want to do is put you in jail,” Merchan said. “You are the former president of the United States and possibly the next president as well. There are many reasons why incarceration is truly a last resort for me. To take that step would be disruptive to these proceedings.”
The latest violation came from an April 22 interview with TV channel Real America’s Voice in which Trump criticized the speed at which the jury was picked and claimed, without evidence, that it was filled with Democrats.
After the testimony resumed, McConney talked about conversations with longtime Trump Organization finance chief Allen Weisselberg in January 2017 regarding reimbursing Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and personal fixer, for a $130,000 payment meant to silence a porn actor who said she had a sexual encounter with Trump a decade earlier.
Weisselberg stated that they needed to give money to Michael, and they had to reimburse Michael. He threw a pad at me, and I started writing down what he said. That's how I found out.
He threw the pad at me and said, 'Write this down,' said McConney, who worked for Trump’s company for about 36 years, retiring last year after he was granted immunity to testify for the prosecution at the Trump Organization’s New York criminal tax fraud trial.
A bank statement shown in court revealed Cohen giving $130,000 to Keith Davidson, the lawyer for porn actor Stormy Daniels, on Oct. 27, 2016, from an account Cohen created for that purpose.
Weisselberg’s handwritten notes about reimbursing Cohen were attached to the bank statement in the company’s files, according to McConney. Those notes outlined a plan to pay Cohen $420,000, with a base reimbursement that was then doubled to cover anticipated taxes and a $60,000 bonus.
McConney’s own notes, taken on the notepad Weisselberg threw at him, were also presented in court. After calculating that Cohen would receive $35,000 per month for 12 months, McConney wrote: “wire monthly from DJT.”
Asked what that meant, McConney said: “That was from the president’s personal bank account.”
Trump is accused of altering business records by labeling the money paid to Cohen in his company’s records as legal fees. Prosecutors argue that by giving him income and providing extra to cover taxes, the Trump executives were able to hide the reimbursement.
McConney testified that he had told an accounting department employee to record the reimbursements to Cohen as a legal expense.
After making the first two payments to Cohen through a trust, the rest of the payments from April 2017 onward were made from Trump’s personal account, according to McConney. With Trump as the sole signatory to that account and now in the White House, the change in funding source required “a whole new process for us,” McConney added.
“Somehow we’d have to get a package down to the White House, get the president to sign the checks, get the checks returned to us and then get the checks mailed out.”
McConney’s testimony follows an account given to jurors Friday about Trump’s reaction to a politically damaging recording that surfaced in the final weeks of the 2016 campaign.
Hicks provided jurors with an insider’s view of that chaotic and pivotal stretch of the campaign, when a 2005 recording showing Trump talking about grabbing women sexually without their permission was made public and when he and his allies sought to prevent the release of other potentially embarrassing stories.
That effort, prosecutors say, included hush money payments to Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal, who both have said they had sexual encounters with Trump before he entered politics.
“I had a good sense to believe this was going to be a massive story and that it was going to dominate the news cycle for the next several days,” Hicks said of the “Access Hollywood” recording, first revealed in an October 2016 Washington Post story. “This was a damaging development.”
Prosecutors continue to work on their main witness, Cohen, who pleaded guilty to federal charges connected to the secret money payments. They expect him to face tough questions from defense lawyers trying to weaken his credibility with the jury.
___
Tucker reported from Washington.
