Donald Trump’s alleged hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels to mute a crescendoing story about their 2008 affair may have begun with David Pecker’s American Media Inc., but it certainly didn’t end there.
While on the stand Tuesday, Daniels’s former attorney Keith Davidson claimed that “after AMI washed their hands of the deal, AMI handed it off” to Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen. “In essence, Michael Cohen stepped into AMI’s shoes,” Davidson said.
After a rocky payoff to former Playboy model Karen McDougal, the tabloid company seemingly wanted nothing to do with a new scheme to cover up another one of Trump’s affairs—but it wasn’t so simple as Davidson handing the money over to her on his own. According to Davidson, he was always under the impression that the funds were coming directly from “Donald Trump or some corporate affiliation” of the Trump Organization.
But after Cohen failed to make several deadlines for the hush-money payments (and blamed the nonpayments on everything from Yom Kippur to the Secret Service), Davidson notified Cohen that the porn actress would be canceling the agreement.
“I thought he was trying to kick the can down the road until after the election,” Davidson told the court when asked to explain what he thought the reasoning was for the nonpayments.
“I think you can tell by these emails I was sending him, there was a great level of frustration by me and my client,” Davidson testified. “I let him know that the level of dissatisfaction was quite high. He stated, ‘Goddamn it. I’ll just do it myself.’”
Davidson explained he interpreted that as Cohen saying he would just pay up without seeking express permission to do so. A wire transfer form for the payment, displayed earlier Tuesday, showed that Cohen described the payment to Davidson as a “retainer” for legal services.
Trump is accused of using Cohen to sweep an affair with Daniels under the rug ahead of the 2016 presidential election. The Republican presidential nominee faces 34 felony charges in this case for allegedly falsifying business records with the intent to further an underlying crime. Trump has pleaded not guilty on all counts.
