Cohen says boss cut bonus despite fronting hush money

Cohen said he announced his new role as Trump’s personal attorney in a Fox News interview on January 18, 2017. He said there was no retainer agreement for the role, and he expected to leverage his access to the White House to make money via other means.

Cohen said he received a congratulatory text from a business associate days before Trump’s inauguration that read: “Congratulations on being President Trump’s personal counsel (consigliere)!” Consigliere is a term typically associated with the mafia.

Cohen said he met with Allen Weisselberg, then the Trump Organisation’s CFO, in January 2017 to discuss how he would be repaid.

There was not only the $130,000 payment to Daniels but also $50,000 that he paid to a polling firm to rig an online survey in Trump’s favour.

Cohen said Weisselberg told him the fees would be calculated to offset any additional income taxes, and he would receive a total of $420,000 in $35,000 monthly payments beginning that February. The figure would include a $60,000 bonus. By this point Cohen had taken on an unpaid role as the newly elected President Trump’s personal attorney.

Court has now ended for the day.

Cohen testified that he was furious when Trump cut his end-of-year bonus by two thirds in December 2016. He said that Rhona Graff, Trump’s former executive assistant, would hand out Christmas cards to each of the employees with their bonus figure inside.

Cohen said he opened his to find that not only had Trump not reimbursed him for the $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels, he had reduced the bonus. “I was truly insulted,” Cohen said. “After all that I had gone through in terms of the campaign … in laying out $130,000 to protect him, it was insulting.”

Cohen said he complained to Allen Weisselberg, then the Trump Organisation’s CFO, using “colourful language”. He said that Trump called him while he was on holiday and told him not to worry about the “other thing”, and that he would “take care of it before you get back”.

Without direct evidence, Donald Trump’s hush money prosecutors are leaning heavily on the testimony of his former fixer — but the jury may not believe a convicted perjurer.

Read David Charter’s analysis in full.

Much of the focus before Cohen’s testimony began was on whether Trump would be able to contain his emotions.

He has kept his eyes closed for much of the day in court, at other times leaning back in his seat and occasionally chatting with his lawyers. Trump brought a stack of printed news articles in with him, and has periodically leafed through them.

He appeared to take exception to parts of the testimony, notably when Cohen said that Trump was more concerned about how the hush money payment to Daniels would impact his campaign than how his wife Melania would react.

Trump also shook his head when Cohen testified he was offered the role of assistant general counsel in the Trump White House.

After Trump’s unexpected victory in the 2016 presidential election, Cohen’s services were no longer needed at the Trump Organisation, he said.

He said he was offered the role of White House assistant general counsel, which he says he turned down. He was disappointed not to be offered the role of Trump’s White House chief of staff, he added — not because he wanted the job, just the kudos from being included in the conversation.

The trial has resumed for the final phase of the day, with the jury being shown text messages between Cohen and Hope Hicks, Trump’s 2016 election campaign press secretary.

The texts are from the day after the Wall Street Journal published a story revealing the hush money deal with McDougal. Cohen texted Hicks that the story was getting “little to no traction”. She replied: “Keep praying! It’s working.”

Cohen went on to say in the messages that he would not bother issuing a denial from Daniels as no one believed the story.

Susan Hoffinger, for the prosecution, has indicated her direct questioning of Cohen will continue into Tuesday.

The jury has been shown a Wall Street Journal article from November 4, 2016, that revealed the hush money deal between McDougal and the National Enquirer’s parent company, AMI. The story also briefly referred to Stormy Daniels.

Cohen said that he spoke to Hope Hicks, the Trump campaign press secretary, and to David Pecker, the AMI publisher, about how to respond. He testified that he suspected the story had been leaked by someone close to Keith Davidson, Daniels’ lawyer.

He said he erupted in anger in a phone call, and Davidson later issued a denial to appease him.

The court is now on a short afternoon break.

Cohen testified that he spoke to Trump for several minutes on October 27, 2016, immediately after the payment had been finalised. He said he wanted to inform “the boss” that the task he had been given was “finished, accomplished, done”.

The rationale for the call was twofold: he also wanted to “take credit for myself so that he knew I had done it and finished it, because this was important”.

Cohen said at the outset of his testimony that he was constantly seeking Trump’s approval for the unsavoury tasks he performed on his behalf.

Cohen testified that a $130,000 payment he made to Daniels’ lawyer on October 27, 2016, which was marked “retainer”, was in fact for the hush money payment.

Susan Hoffinger, for the prosecution, asked whether the statement was truthful. “No, ma’am. It was in order to pay Stormy Daniels to execute the NDA [non-disclosure agreement] and to obtain the story,” Cohen said.

The deception Cohen describes here goes to the crux of the criminal wrongdoing alleged by the prosecution: that Trump and Cohen worked in cahoots to knowingly falsify the payment to Daniels to receive an undeclared benefit to his campaign.

Cohen’s testimony is linking together many of the threads of evidence the jury has previously heard. He is corroborating emails, phone calls and text messages introduced into evidence, and explaining how the alleged hush money payment tied into the chaotic nature of the final days of the 2016 presidential campaign.

Cohen said he and Allen Weisselberg, then CFO of the Trump Organisation, met to figure out how they could arrange the payment to Daniels without Trump’s fingerprints being on it.

He recalled that he and Weisselberg discussed giving away a membership to one of Trump’s golf courses to someone who could front the money, or crediting a family seeking to have a bar mitzvah at a Trump property. “The whole purpose was to ensure that in no way was the Trump name disclosed,” Cohen testified.

Cohen said he arranged to pay the Daniels hush money as a loan through a home equity line of credit to keep it secret from his wife.

He testified that he made one final attempt to get David Pecker to pay Daniels the $130,000 on October 25. “Not a chance,” Pecker replied, according to Cohen.

Cohen said the story would have been “catastrophic” to the campaign, and he felt he had to get the payment done. He said he contacted Daniels’ lawyer Keith Davidson that night, and then had two more conversations with Trump the next morning.

“Everything required Mr Trump’s sign-off, on top of that I wanted the money back,” Cohen said.

Cohen said he met with Allen Weisselberg, then the Trump Organisation’s chief financial officer, to work out how they would make the $130,000 payment to Daniels.

Amid a growing sense of panic that the story was about to come out, Cohen suggested to Weisselberg that he should pay. “You’re making seven figures. Why don’t you pay it?” Cohen said he had told the him.

Weisselberg said he could not afford to, and so Cohen finally agreed to pay it himself.

Cohen testified that he left Trump a voicemail message about Daniels going public with her story on October 17. The next day, he received a text from Melania that read: “Good morning Michael, can u pls call DT on his cell. Thanks.”

“Of course,” Cohen replied. He testified that Trump told him he had spoken to some of his “smart” friends, who had told him: “You’re a billionaire, just pay it.”

Cohen said that Trump told him to meet up with Allen Weisselberg, then the Trump Organisation’s chief financial officer, and “figure this whole thing out”.

Cohen has been asked about setting up a company to pay Daniels the $130,000 hush money. The jury was shown emails with Cohen and his banker Gary Farro discussing the paperwork on October 13, 2016. The company would eventually be called Essential Consultants.

By October 17, Cohen testified, he was increasingly concerned that Daniels would go public with her story before election day. He said he received a text message from Dylan Howard, the former National Enquirer editor, to say Daniels was considering taking her story to the Daily Mail.

“This was obviously incredibly stressful, incredibly important,” Cohen told the court.

Cohen has retaken the stand after lunch, and has been asked about his attempt to delay a hush money payment to Daniels until after the 2016 election.

He was shown a series of emails with Keith Davidson, Daniels’ lawyer, who was growing increasingly frustrated at the lack of payment.

Cohen, who is Jewish, told the prosecutor that he tried to use the holiday of Yom Kippur as a delay tactic.

Trump may be banned from attacking hush money trial witnesses, but his political allies are free to.

After watching the first hour of Cohen’s testimony this morning, two Republican senators sought to undermine his claims. JD Vance, an Ohio senator and potential Trump running mate, described Cohen as a “convicted felon” who had admitted secretly recording his former employer. “Does any reasonable, sensible person believe anything that Michael Cohen says?”

Tommy Tuberville, a senator from Alabama, said the courtroom was “the most depressing thing I’ve ever been to”, adding: “Mental anguish is trying to be pushed on the Republican candidate for the president of the United States.”

The jury has been shown an email from Daniels’ lawyer Keith Davidson to Cohen dated October 11, 2016. It proposes a payment of $130,000 to buy Daniels’ silence, and an agreement that they would sign the document using pseudonyms to maintain secrecy.

Cohen testified that it was his idea to add a punitive clause under which Daniels would face a $1 million fine if she broke the terms of the agreement. He said he requested several delays to finalise the contract to try to push it past election day, and that Trump had no intention of paying Daniels.

During her testimony last week, Daniels said she suspected Trump was trying to cheat her out of the payment and threatened to go public just before the election.

The trial has now broken for lunch, and will resume at about 2pm local time (7pm BST).

According to Cohen, Trump’s sole concern was to prevent Stormy Daniels’ story from coming out before the election. Cohen recalled Trump saying: “I want you to just push it out as long as you can just get past the election. Because if I win it will have no relevance because I’m president. And if I lose, I don’t even care.”

Cohen testified that Trump “wasn’t thinking about Melania”, adding: “This was all about the campaign.”

Trump has always denied an affair with Daniels took place. His defence team suggested in opening arguments that he had been trying to protect his wife from embarrassing headlines as an explanation for the hush money payment

Cohen testified that he heard from someone at the National Enquirer that Daniels was shopping a story of an alleged affair with Trump. This was around October 8, 2016, he said, one day after the Access Hollywood recording of Trump bragging about sexual assault had been leaked.

Cohen said he was aware of who Daniels was after having previously tried to get an article about the alleged affair with Trump removed from a gossip website in 2011. He immediately realised how damaging Daniels’ claims could be in light of the fallout from the Access Hollywood tape, he said.

Cohen said Trump told him: “Women are going to hate me… Guys may think it’s cool, but this is going to be a disaster for the campaign.”

After the Access Hollywood tape — in which Trump was recorded bragging about sexual assault — was leaked to the Washington Post in October 2016, Cohen said he spoke with Trump while he was on a trip to London about how to handle the fallout.

Cohen testified that Trump asked him to reach out to his contacts in the media to try to put a positive spin on it. He said Trump told him it was his wife Melania’s idea to dismiss the tape as “locker room talk”.

Recounting his conversation with Trump, Cohen said: “The spin he wanted put on it was that this is locker room talk, something that Melania had recommended, or at least he told me that’s what Melania had thought it was, and use that in order to get control over the story and to minimise its impact on him and his campaign.”

The jury was then shown text messages between Cohen and the former CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, in which Cuomo asks if Cohen is going to defend Trump. “I have been asked by everyone to do shows starting Tuesday. Not sure what I will do,” Cohen said. Cuomo replied: “Will be too late. He is dying right now.”

Cohen testified that he had ten to twelve conversations with Allen Weisselberg, the former Trump Organisation chief financial officer, about how to handle the payment to purchase the lifetime rights to McDougal’s story.

He said Weisselberg advised him to set up a limited liability company, Resolution Consultants, to handle the payment to avoid going through the Trump Organisation and linking it directly to Trump.

This is how the prosecution says the payments to Stormy Daniels at the heart of the trial were also structured. Asked by the prosecutor Susan Hoffinger if he had bought McDougal’s story for his own benefit, Cohen replied: “What I was doing was at the direction and for the benefit of Mr Trump.”

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Court is back under way, with Cohen being asked about the secret recording he made of a conversation with Trump played to the jury before the break.

He testified that he cut the recording off abruptly because he received another call. Prosecutors, keen to corroborate everything said by Cohen, a convicted perjurer, then show the jury phone records to confirm Cohen had an incoming call at that time.

In earlier testimony, Cohen recounted a conversation he had with Trump about the potential damage to his presidential campaign of women coming forward with stories about his personal life.

Susan Hoffinger, prosecuting, asked if Trump had expressed any concerns as he weighed whether or not to run. According to Cohen, Trump said: “You know that when this comes out … just be prepared there’s going to be a lot of women coming forward.”

Trump pumped his fist three times and ignored several questions shouted to him by reporters in a hallway outside of the courtroom as he left for a morning break.

Cohen’s testimony so far has already covered a lot of ground, and prosecutors appear poised to move on to the Stormy Daniels hush money payment when court resumes.

The jury has been played a recording of a conversation between Cohen and Trump from September 2016 in which they discuss a deal to pay Karen McDougal to keep her quiet about an alleged affair.

Cohen said he taped the conversation secretly to show David Pecker, the National Enquirer publisher, that Trump intended to pay him back. In it, Cohen tells Trump that he needs to “open up a company for the transfer of all that info regarding our friend, David”.

“So, what do we got to pay for this? One-fifty?” Trump says on the recording.

Listen to the recording:

Cohen testified that Trump directed him to speak to Allen Weisselberg, the former Trump Organisation chief financial officer, about the transfer. Cohen leaked the recording, which was legal under New York laws on “one party consent”, to media in 2018.

Cohen testified that Trump was delighted when a deal was struck with McDougal in June 2016. Under the terms, David Pecker, publisher of the National Enquirer, agreed to pay the former Playboy model $150,000 for exclusive rights to her story of having a ten-month sexual relationship with Trump.

The Enquirer also promised to run 24 fitness articles and put her on two covers.

Cohen testified that Pecker later became increasingly nervous about whether Trump would reimburse him as promised, as he would have been unable to conceal the $150,000 from the Enquirer’s owners. He said he warned Trump that the magazine also had files that would be unflattering to the former president should they ever emerge.

Trump’s son Eric shared his thoughts on Cohen’s testimony from the front row of the courtroom. “I have never seen anything more rehearsed!” he posted on X/Twitter.

Eric Trump also shared a post from JD Vance, the Ohio senator and a rumoured contender to be Trump’s running-mate, who is also attending the trial today. Vance said he could understand why Trump is said to have been falling asleep in court. “I’m 39 years old and I’ve been here for 26 minutes and I’m about to fall asleep,” he said.

Cohen said he began regularly meeting with National Enquirer editors to make sure that a claim of an affair with Trump by Karen McDougal would not come out. He testified that he received regular updates from David Pecker and Dylan Howard via email, text and the encrypted messaging platform Signal.

He said he was also in communication with McDougal and Keith Schiller, Trump’s longtime bodyguard, and Trump himself as negotiations to buy the story continued. Prosecutors are introducing text messages, emails and phone records from this time into evidence, as Cohen explains their context and significance.

Cohen testified that he received a call from a National Enquirer editor in June 2016 to say they were aware Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model, was looking to sell her story of an alleged affair with Trump.

He said he notified Trump immediately, aware that the story could have a “significant” impact on the campaign, then asked him if he knew who McDougal was. “His response to me was, ‘she’s really beautiful’,” Cohen says. He said Trump told him to ensure that the story did not come out.

Cohen testified about how the National Enquirer purchased for $30,000 a story from the former Trump Tower doorman Dino Sajudin about Trump fathering a child.

He confirmed the strategy was to “take it off the market” before the 2016 presidential election. He said he kept Trump closely appraised of the deal so he could take the credit. David Pecker, publisher of the Enquirer, earlier testified that the magazine investigated the doorman’s claims and found they were without merit.

Trump has been showing little reaction to Cohen’s testimony so far. He has been leaning back in his chair, and closing his eyes.

Susan Hoffinger, prosecuting, has shown the jury emails from January 2016 between Cohen and the former National Enquirer editors Dylan Howard and Barry Levine.

In one email, Levine tells Cohen they were “repackaging and repurposing past material from our files and adding additional material”. Levine assured Cohen the articles would be of a “positive nature”. Cohen replied with suggested story edits, saying at one point he would “like to reword the part about Atlantic City”.

The jury was then shown a resulting front page with the headline “The Donald Trump Nobody Knows!”

Cohen has been asked about an August 2015 meeting at Trump Tower between Cohen, Trump and David Pecker, the National Enquirer’s publisher. It was here that prosecutors say the plan to “catch and kill” damaging stories to Trump was hatched.

Cohen testified that the Enquirer’s reach as a supermarket tabloid, prominently displayed in grocery stores and on newsstands, made it a powerful ally for the campaign. He said Pecker promised to keep an eye out for negative stories about Trump.

The Enquirer would run stories about Trump’s opponents past the campaign before they were published. These included infamous stories about Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio.

The testimony has shifted to Cohen’s relationship with David Pecker, the former National Enquirer publisher who was the first witness to testify.

Cohen said he had known Pecker through mutual acquaintances on Long Island and began speaking to him regularly after he joined the Trump Organisation. He said they used Signal, an encrypted messaging app, to communicate.

Cohen said he was not aware of the Enquirer’s practice of buying and suppressing negative stories before Trump ran for president in 2016, which has come to be referred to as “catch and kill”. Pecker testified about what prosecutors say was a criminal conspiracy to buy negative news stories for the purpose of ensuring they would never be published.

Cohen testified that working for Trump entailed a starting base salary of $375,000, and that his ten-year stretch in the job was an “amazing experience”.

“For the most part, I enjoyed the responsibilities that were given to me, I enjoyed working with my colleagues at the Trump Organisation and his children,” he said. “It was a big family.”

Cohen said that Trump was a demanding boss who expected immediate results, and agreed it was fair to describe him as Trump’s “fixer”.

As we have heard from previous witnesses, Cohen confirmed Trump never used email. Elaborating on why, Cohen said his former boss knew of “too many people who have gone down” because law enforcement gained access to their electronic records.

Cohen said he was in contact with Trump several times a day in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election, and said he lied for Trump and bullied people on his behalf. “The only thing that was on my mind” was to accomplish the task “to make him happy”, he said.

Cohen told the prosecutor Susan Hoffinger he did “whatever” Trump wanted him to. This included renegotiating bills and legal contracts on a golf course in New Jersey, and helping him with his ill-fated Trump University venture.

Cohen said he would threaten to sue companies and individuals if they crossed Trump. He added he felt “on top of the world” when receiving praise from him.

Cohen, speaking in a calm and even tone, described how he began working for Trump when he lived at Trump World Tower.

Cohen said he went to meet Trump about a $100,000 bill for Trump Entertainment Resorts. Trump asked to meet at his office. He then asked Cohen whether he was happy working at his “sleepy old firm” before offering him a job. “And I was honored, I was taken by surprise,” Cohen recalled.

Cohen has taken the stand. He is providing family background, saying: “Actually, I really didn’t want to be a lawyer. My grandmother wanted me to be a lawyer. My family is comprised of doctors and lawyers.”

Trump is looking straight ahead and not reacting as his former fixer testifies.

In comments outside court Trump highlighted a poll published by the New York Times today that shows him with a healthy lead over President Biden in five crucial swing states.

He touted the size of his crowd at a rally at Wildwood, New Jersey, over the weekend, and claimed that his supporters were being prevented from turning up at the Manhattan court. He also once again called Judge Juan Merchan “corrupt and so conflicted”, and blamed the hush money trial on his political foes.

“It’s a disgrace to the country. I’m campaigning now instead of sitting in a very cold courthouse all day long,” he said. “This is a Biden prosecution. It’s election interference at a level that nobody in this country has ever seen before.”

• Read more: Who will win the election? Latest polls and predictions

Donald Trump turned up the invective and profanity for a huge rally crowd in New Jersey when he repeatedly blamed “total moron” President Biden for the criminal charges against him.

He also, however, prompted confusion by bringing up Hannibal Lecter, the fictional serial killer from The Silence of the Lambs played by Anthony Hopkins in the 1991 film, apparently as an example of migrants entering the US.

“Has anyone ever seen The Silence of the Lambs? The late, great Hannibal Lecter. He’s a wonderful man,” Trump said. “He oftentimes would have a friend for dinner. Remember the last scene? ‘Excuse me, I’m about to have a friend for dinner,’ as this poor doctor walked by. ‘I’m about to have a friend for dinner.’ But Hannibal Lecter. Congratulations.

“The late, great Hannibal Lecter. We have people that have been released into our country that we don’t want in our country, and they’re coming in totally unchecked, totally unvetted. And we can’t let this happen.”

• Read more: Trump turns up the profanity at New Jersey rally

Trump has arrived at the court. According to reporters inside the courtroom, today is easily the most crowded day of the trial so far, with members of the public queuing from 3am to try to secure a seat in court.

Among Trump’s entourage are Nicole Malliotakis, a Republican congresswoman from New York, and the senators JD Vance and Tommy Tuberville. Several such political allies have appeared at his side throughout the trial, to offer moral support and provide supportive comments to the media.

A handful of Trump’s supporters greeted him outside the court in lower Manhattan.

Judge Juan Merchan warned the former president last week that if he continued to violate a gag order preventing him talking about key witnesses, he would risk a jail term.

Plans are in place about where he will be held in custody — and what will happen to his Secret Service detail.

• Read more: Will Trump go to jail — and what would prison be like for him?

Todd Blanche, Trump’s lead defence counsel, described Cohen as having a history of dishonesty and criminal conduct.

In his opening statements Blanche said Cohen had a “goal, an obsession with getting Trump. I submit to you that he cannot be trusted.”

In opening arguments, prosecutor Matthew Colengelo presaged Cohen’s credibility problems by telling the jury his testimony would be backed up by bank records, emails, text messages, business documents and other records.

Cohen’s claims that he repaid Daniels on Trump’s behalf have also been corroborated by the former president’s sworn statements and his own tweets.

Since his parting of ways from Trump, Cohen has refashioned himself as an outspoken critic and antagonist of the former president.

In 2020, he released a memoir entitled Disloyal, in which he claimed to have been Trump’s “fiercest surrogate, closest confidant, and staunchest defender”, and someone who knew where “the skeletons are buried”. Cohen described himself as Trump’s “spokesman, thug, pit bull and lawless lawyer”.

He released a second book, Revenge, in 2022, and launched a podcast, Mea Culpa, where he spends a lot of time attacking his former boss. He has continued to bash Trump in social media posts and interviews throughout the trial, drawing several requests from Judge Juan Merchan to stop.

In August 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to federal campaign finance violations for his role in the Daniels hush money payment.

The relationship between Trump and Cohen, his former lawyer and fixer, had turned sour earlier in 2018 after Trump stopped paying his legal fees. Cohen admitted eight counts including campaign finance offences in relation to payments made to Daniels and Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model, on the eve of the 2016 presidential election.

At the time, he told a judge that one payment was made “in coordination and at the direction of a candidate for federal office”, and the other was made “under direction of the same candidate.” He served about 13 months in prison.

Cohen left his apartment in New York without responding to media questions. Despite warnings from Judge Juan Merchan against discussing the case, Cohen has continued to speak about the trial as recently as last week in comments on TikTok.

On Friday, Merchan asked prosecutors to remind Cohen again to refrain from speaking about the case. “I would direct the people to communicate to Mr Cohen that the judge is asking him to refrain from making any more statements about this case,” Merchan said. “That comes from the bench and you are communicating that on behalf of the bench.”

Stormy Daniels gave evidence at the trial last week. The former porn star, 45, gave explicit details about the alleged sexual encounter that Trump, 77, denies took place.

She was rebuked by the judge for being too explicit, said she took the $130,000 hush money out of fear and defended speaking to the dead on Spooky Babes.

• Read more: The 9 key takeaways from Daniel’s testimony

The New York trial features a porn star, a president and a Trump World Tower doorman with a story to tell. A conviction could carry a four-year jail term.

• Read more: Why is Trump on trial? The case explained

Michael Cohen, who gained a reputation as Trump’s “pit bull”, is from Long Island in New York state.

He was educated at a leading private school, studied law and went on to work for a personal injury lawyer who later pleaded guilty to bribery.

Cohen later worked at a law office in Queens that was also a taxi garage. He ran for the New York city council in 2003 but failed, and began buying flats in Trump properties. It was said that he was a huge fan of Trump before he started working for him in about 2007.

Read the full story here.

Michael Cohen is expected to testify about his role in arranging alleged hush money payments on Trump’s behalf during his first presidential campaign in 2016.

Prosecutors have documents showing that Cohen made a $130,000 payment to Daniels and was then reimbursed by the Trump Organization, which marked it down as a legal expense. They have records of phone calls Cohen made to Trump at the time. But they need Cohen to tell the jury what was said.

Trump’s lawyers have previously called Cohen an “admitted liar” with an “obsession to get President Trump”.