NEW YORK (1010 WINS/WCBS 880) – Donald Trump’s hush money trial has entered its third week of testimony Monday after crucial witnesses took the stand last week in New York.
Judge Juan M. Merchan has again held Trump in contempt of court and fined him another $1,000 for violating the gag order, sternly warning the former president of the possibility of jail for future violations.
4:45 P.M. - Trump on jail time: ‘I’ll do that sacrifice any day’
Trump ended his day in court by suggesting he’s willing to go to jail to keep railing against his case. He briefly addressed the cameras, once again criticizing the gag order. "Our constitution holds far greater significance than incarceration. It’s not even a comparison. I'm willing to make that sacrifice any day," he asserted.
Trump also complained about the case potentially lasting another two to three weeks, as has been expected, calling it “election interference.”
“This case should be over. This case should have never been brought,” he said. “I thought they were finished today,” he said, charging “they all want to keep me off the campaign trail.”
He also said he thinks his legal team is doing “very well.”
He didn't answer questions about Stormy Daniels, Michael Cohen, spending a night in Rikers, or why he paid Michael Cohen.
4:40 P.M. - Trial is adjourning early for the day, Prosecution is ahead of schedule
The trial is adjourning for the day, about a half-hour earlier than expected. It appears prosecutors opted not to put on another witness for such a short time at the end of the day.
Assistant District Attorney Joshua Steinglass told Judge Juan M. Merchan that the prosecution’s case is proceeding ahead of schedule and he estimates being finished calling witnesses two weeks from Tuesday.
Once the prosecution is done, Trump’s lawyers can then call their own witnesses.
4:10 P.M. - Tarasoff concludes her testimony
Tarasoff is done on the witness stand after a brief cross-examination. Trump lawyer Todd Blanche’s questions focused on having the accounts payable supervisor acknowledge that she got permission to cut the checks in question not from Trump himself but from his company’s chief financial officer and controller.
“You never had any reason to believe that President Trump was hiding anything or anything like that?” Blanche asked.
“Correct,” Tarasoff replied.
2:30 P.M. - Next witness is Deborah Tarasoff, accounts payable supervisor at the Trump Organization
The next witness is Deb Tarasoff from the Accounts Payable Department of the Trump Organization. Tarasoff boasts 24 years of experience with the organization. Tarasoff was the recipient of a 2017 email in which then-controller Jeffrey McConney told her “post to legal expenses” with regard to the handling of reimbursement payments to Michael Cohen. She prepared the checks used to pay Cohen.
During her testimony, she was questioned about various individuals within the company, including Allen Weisselberg, the former CFO.
Question: What was his management style?
Tarasoff: He had his hands in everything.
(Weisselberg orchestrated the form of payments to Michael Cohen)."
Tarasoff and McConney both worked under longtime company chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg. Tarasoff previously testified at the Trump Organization’s 2022 trial on unrelated tax fraud charges.
In that case, she testified that she knew nothing about Weisselberg’s scheme to evade taxes on $1.7 million in company-paid perks and was just following orders when she processed payments from Trump Organization accounts for his personal expenses.
Q: After 2017, did anything change regarding DJT account (Trump's personal checking account)?
A: No, we'd send them to the White House for him to sign.
Q: Even when he was in DC, no one had the authority to sign those checks?
A: That's right.
(These checks were from Trump's personal checking account, and nine of them were written to Michael Cohen in 2017, signed by Trump)."
Also in that testimony, Tarasoff said she agreed with a defense lawyer’s description of Weisselberg as an exacting, authoritarian micromanager who enjoyed immense trust within the company.
Tarasoff said that in September 2016, as the presidential vote that catapulted Trump to the presidency neared, Weisselberg ordered her to start deleting notations about some of the transactions in the company’s bookkeeping system. Tarasoff said she didn’t think Weisselberg was asking her to do anything illegal.
But even if he had, she said: “I guess I would because he’s the boss and he told me to do it.”
1 P.M. - Trump leaves courtroom for lunch
McConney's testimony concluded, and the court is now taking a lunch break. There was no comment from Trump as he left the courtroom. However, he gave a thumbs-up as he passed the cameras in the hallway.
12:50 A.M. - McConney acknowledges legal retainers can be verbal, ends testimony
In a riposte to prosecutors’ questions that elicited that McConney never saw a legal retainer agreement for Cohen, Bove asked whether retainers can be verbal. “To my knowledge, yes,” McConney said.
Bove then wrapped up his cross-examination of McConney. After a quick second round of questions from prosecutor Matthew Colangelo and Bove apiece, his time on the stand is over.
The court is now breaking for lunch.
12:30 P.M. - Cross-examination of former Trump Organization controller underway
Prosecutors have finished at least their first round of questions for McConney. Trump lawyer Emil Bove is beginning his cross-examination.
Bove began his cross-examination of McConney with questions that hit on a key defense theme: that Cohen was a lawyer, and “payments to lawyers are legal expenses,” are they not? McConney agreed they were. It’s a point the defense wants to make because part of its argument is that there was nothing illegal about the way Cohen was paid.
Bove: He didn't ask you to do any of the things described during direct examination regarding the checks?
McConney: He did not.
Bove: President Trump did not ask anyone to do those things, is that correct?
McConney: That's correct.
Bove: None of the conversations you had with Allen Weisselberg involved him saying that Trump asked him to do these things?
McConney: Allen never told me that.
Underscoring his point that Cohen was acting as a lawyer to Trump, Bove directed McConney to the signature in a February 2017 email, which reads: “Personal attorney to President Donald J. Trump” and shows a Gmail address, rather than a Trump Organization email.
“It doesn’t say ‘fixer’ does it?” Bove asked, referencing a title commonly applied to Cohen.
“No,” McConney responded.
Bove posited that by that point, after leaving his full-time position at the Trump Organization, Cohen was “akin to a vendor to President Trump” and was paid accordingly.
12 P.M. - Trump's revocable trust account entered as evidence
The revocable trust account belonging to Donald Trump has now been entered into evidence, revealing a range of legal expenses covered by the trust.
11:05 A.M. - An email from McConney to Weisselberg and the financial team
In an email from witness Jeff McConney to Allen Weisselberg and the financial team, he instructed, "Please pay from the Trust and post to legal expenses, designated for retainer for the months of Jan and Feb." These instructions pertained to the $35,000 monthly payments to Michael Cohen.
McConney clarified, "At that point in time, paying DJT personal expenses were sourced from the DJT trust account," referring to 2017 when Trump was president. He added that Don Jr. and Eric had to approve, as they were overseeing the trust.
Getting to a key part of the case — how and why Cohen’s reimbursement for the Daniels payment was entered as a legal expense — McConney testified that he instructed an accounting department employee to do so.
All expenses had to be entered in the general ledger with a category code, and “we were paying a lawyer,” McConney explained. So in went the code: 51505.
He also instructed the employee to record that the first two payments were for a “retainer” for the months of January and February 2017.
“I was just taking information from the invoice” Cohen had typed into an email, McConney said, though he acknowledged he’d never seen a retainer agreement between Cohen and the company.
After paying the first two checks to Cohen through a trust, the remainder of the checks — covering payments for April to December 2017 — were paid from Trump’s personal account, McConney testified.
With Trump, the only signatory to that account, now in the White House, the change in funding source necessitated “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,” he testified.
11 A.M. - Bank statement and notes lay out plan to repay Cohen
A bank statement displayed in court showed Cohen paying $130,000 to Davidson, Daniels’ lawyer, on Oct. 27, 2016, out of an account for an entity Cohen created for the purpose.
Weisselberg’s handwritten notes about reimbursing Cohen were stapled to the bank statement in the company’s files, McConney said.
Those notes spell out a plan to pay Cohen a base reimbursement of $180,000 — covering the payment to Davidson and an unrelated technology bill. That total was then doubled or “grossed up” to cover the state, city and federal taxes Weisselberg estimated Cohen would incur on the payments.
Weisselberg then added a $60,000 bonus, for a total of $420,000, according to the notes. That money was to be paid out in 12 monthly installments of $35,000 each.
McConney’s own notes were also shown in court. After calculations that laid out that Cohen would get $35,000 a month for 12 months, McConney wrote: “wire monthly from DJT.”
Asked what that meant, McConney said: “that was out of the president’s personal bank account.”
McConney said he didn’t know of any other time when the company added onto an employee reimbursement to cover the cost of taxes. Employee reimbursements, if characterized as such, are not subject to taxation.
Trump is accused of falsifying business records by labeling the money paid to Cohen in his company’s records as legal fees. Prosecutors contend that by paying him income and giving him extra to account for taxes, the Trump executives were able conceal the reimbursement.
10:55 A.M. - Jurors hear about reimbursements at heart of charges against Trump
For the first time, jurors are hearing about the reimbursements at the root of the falsifying business records charges against Trump.
McConney testified about conversations he had with the company’s longtime finance chief Allen Weisselberg in January 2017 about reimbursing Cohen for $130,000 he’d paid to lawyer Keith Davidson. Davidson was the lawyer for porn actor Stormy Daniels.
“Allen Weisselberg said we had to get some money to Michael, we had to reimburse Michael. He tossed a pad toward me and I started taking notes on what he said,” McConney testified, recalling a Jan. 27, 2017, meeting with Weisselberg. “That’s how I found out about it.”
“He kind of threw the pad at me and said, ‘take this down,’” McConney testified.
Cohen, who’d worked for the Trump Organization for about a decade, had just been taken off the payroll as a salaried employee.
10:40 A.M. - McConney testifies about 130 wire payment to attorney Keith Davidson
This wire transfer was for $130,000, sent to Stormy Daniels' attorney as per prosecutors. McConney also clarified payments to Michael Cohen, totaling $420,000, including a bonus and other expenses. These payments were set at $35,000 monthly for a year. Cohen stopped working for Trump Org in January 2017.
10:35 A.M. -McConney is asked how he knows Michael Cohen.
As prosecutors shift their questions to the subject of Cohen, McConney — like multiple witnesses before him — doesn’t seem to be a fan.
Asked if he was familiar with the former Trump attorney and fixer, McConney paused briefly, before adding: “I’ve had conversations with him by the coffee machine.” In response to a question about Cohen’s position within the Trump Organization, McConney responded dryly: “He said he was a lawyer.”
Are you familiar with Michael Cohen?
McConney: Yes, he was employed by the Trump Organization for a number of years. We worked together for about 5 to 10 years.
When was his last day?
McConney: His last day was January 27th, and he was paid through 2017.
What was his position?
McConney: He said he was a lawyer.
10:20 A.M. - ‘You’re fired': Former exec recalls early lesson from Trump
In an anecdote from early in his career, McConney described Trump’s close attention to his cash and hardball approach to bills.
When he went to drop off a report on Trump’s desk one day in the late 1980s, the then-real estate mogul looked up while on the phone and said, “Jeff, you’re fired.”
McConney was taken aback. Then Trump added, according to the ex-controller: “You’re not fired, but my cash balances went down from last week.”
McConney explained that various expenses had come up. Trump responded that he should “focus on my bills, negotiate my bills.”
“It was a teaching moment,” McConney recalled. The lesson? “If someone’s asking for money, negotiate with them,” rather than just paying.
From the defense table, Trump appeared to enjoy hearing the story, lifting his chin and smiling broadly in McConney’s direction.
10 A.M.- Transcript of Trump speaking in the hallway:
“As to that first question, as you know, they’ve taken away my constitutional right so I’m not allowed to answer that question. This has never happening in this country, it’s a ridiculous case — I did nothing wrong, absolutely nothing wrong. Take a look at Gregg Jarrett. This morning, he went on; take a look at Andy McCarthy or Jonathan Turley, Mark Levin. It’s like they say there’s no case here yet the judge has gagged me and I’m not allowed to talk about, I guess, his total conflict. The judge is totally conflict, totally conflicted and you ought to take a look at it.
“I’m not supposed to be talking about it but I am allowed to say that the judge has a conflict like nobody’s ever had before, you ought to take a look at it. He’s taken away my constitutional right to speak. I was in Miami this weekend, and reporters are asking questions, the same questions you’re asking me. I had to say I had a gag order and I couldn’t speak about it. It never happened before, ever. Number one. Number two: it’s a fake trial and they have no case and it’s been absolutely proven now they have no case whatsoever. This is Alvin Bragg doing it for political reasons for Biden. This is a Biden trial. It’s a crooked president.
“It just came out that Columbia just canceled their commencement, Axios. Columbia just canceled their commencement— that shouldn’t happen. It also came out that the protesters, many of the protesters are backed by Biden’s donors. Okay, are you listening Israel? Are you listening Israel? I hope you’re getting smart but they’re backed by Biden donors. That’s where the money is coming from, and I’m not surprised at all. There’s many other articles, many of them having to do with the gag order, the unconstitutionality having to do with the gag order. And it is unconstitutional and it shouldn’t be allowed. And I wish people could move a little bit quicker, the Appellate courts, because the whole world is watching this, and they see what’s happening."
9:50 A.M. - Jeff McConney, a former Trump Organization executive, is testifying under subpoena
McConney refers to Trump as "President Trump" even though he retired last year. The testimony is likely focused on the paperwork and ledgers related to the payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal before the 2016 election.
9:41 A.M. - Next witness is McConney, who worked in the Trump Organization's business office with Allen Weisselberg
His testimony is expected to provide details on the financial records and documentation around the hush money payments.
He 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, where he admitted breaking the law to help fellow executives avoid taxes on company-paid perks. The company was convicted and is appealing.
He left the company last year with $500,000 in severance, and went on to testify tearfully last fall at the civil fraud trial of Trump, the company and key executives — including McConney. The ex-controller said he’d been worn out by his entanglement in a litany of Trump-related investigations and legal proceedings. “I just wanted to relax and stop being accused of misrepresenting assets for the company that I loved working for,” he said at the time.
9:30 A.M. - Trump faces jail threat as contempt charges mount
The judge directly addressed Trump during the contempt ruling, stating, "It appears the fines are not working. I will have to consider a jail sanction. The last thing I want to do is put you in jail -- you are the former President of the United States and possibly the next President..."
He said Trump’s statement “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.”
“As much as I don’t want to impose a jail sanction,” the judge added, “I want you to understand that I will have to if necessary and appropriate.”
Prosecutors had accused Trump of four violations, but the judge only concurred with one.
The judge had previously fined Trump $9,000 for nine earlier violations in posts on Truth Social and his website.
The comment that violated the gag order
The judge found Trump had violated the gag order for comments he gave to a program called “Just the News No Noise” on April 22, which is broadcast on Real America’s Voice.
On the program, Trump criticized the speed at which the jury was picked and claimed it was stacked with Democrats. “The jury was picked so fast. 95 percent Democrats. The area’s mostly all Democrat,” he is quoted as saying.
In his ruling, Judge Merchan said the comments “not only called into question the integrity, and therefore the legitimacy of these proceedings, but again raised the specter of fear for the safety of the jurors and of their loved ones.”
“Defendant is hereby put on notice that if appropriate and warranted, future violations of its lawful orders will be punishable by incarceration,” the judge wrote in the order.
9:00 A.M. - Donald Trump's hush money trial enters its third week
Trump's son Eric is present in the courtroom, and attorney Allina Habib is attending but not in the well, sitting in the spectator section.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.