Michael Cohne may turn out to be a lousy witness against Donald Trump making the Stormy Daniel’s ‘hush money’ checks….
But the Manhttan DA’s witnesses sure seeem to be showing the criminal trials jury the paper trail….
And making sure the jury understands that one Donald J. Trump KNEW What was going on down to the penny…
After the judge rebuked Mr. Trump for violating a gag order and mounting “a direct attack on the rule of law,” the prosecutors provided jurors with their first look at the 34 records they say he falsified to cover up an infamous payment.
Mr. Trump made the payment to his longtime fixer, Michael D. Cohen, reimbursing him for a $130,000 hush-money payoff to a porn star, Stormy Daniels, prosecutors say. Before Mr. Trump repaid Mr. Cohen, prosecutors say, he orchestrated a scheme to falsify the records.
Mr. Trump, the first American president to face prosecution, is on trial for 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, one for each document: 11 checks to Mr. Cohen, 11 invoices from Mr. Cohen and 12 entries in Mr. Trump’s general ledger. The invoices and ledger entries claimed that Mr. Cohen had been repaid for “legal expenses” that arose from a “retainer agreement.”
But prosecutors say the purported expenses and retainer agreement were works of fiction. And they used veterans of Mr. Trump’s accounting department against him, calling on the Trump Organization’s former controller, Jeffrey McConney, and its accounts payable supervisor, Deborah Tarasoff, to walk jurors through the records.
While Mr. McConney testified that he did not know the true nature of the payments to Mr. Cohen, he bolstered the prosecution’s contention that the records were fishy.
When a prosecutor, Matthew Colangelo, asked Mr. McConney whether he ever saw a retainer agreement, he responded “I did not.” And when asked if he sent the invoice to the company’s legal department — as was common at the Trump Organization — he offered a telling one-word acknowledgment: “No.”
Mr. McConney also told jurors that much of the money for Mr. Cohen had come from Mr. Trump’s personal bank account. The company sent nine of the checks to the White House for Mr. Trump to sign, Mr. McConney explained…..
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His testimony marked a turning point in the prosecution’s case as it pivots from lurid details about buying and burying sex scandals — during the 2016 presidential campaign, Ms. Daniels was shopping her story of a tryst with Mr. Trump — to the records that the former president is accused of falsifying.
Both phases of the case, the captivating sleaze and the stultifying records, are essential to proving the charges. New York law requires prosecutors to show that Mr. Trump falsified the records to conceal another crime, in this case, what the prosecution says was a conspiracy to influence the election by concealing damaging stories from voters…
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Month after month, Mr. Cohen submitted his invoices and was paid. But one month, the payment seemed slow to arrive, and he followed up with Mr. McConney.
“I’ll check the status tomorrow,” Mr. McConney replied. “DJT needs to sign check.”