There was a tense atmosphere in the courtroom when Michael Cohen stood in front of his former employer, says SVT’s foreign reporter Stefan Åsberg, who was there.
Before the jury on Monday, Cohen testified that Donald Trump personally approved the hush-hush payment to porn star Stormy Daniels to bury her story about her alleged sexual intercourse with Trump, Reuters reports.
According to Cohen, Trump is said to have said: “Just do it”. While instructing Cohen to figure out the best way to pay Stormy Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet.
Prosecutors have previously said Trump repaid the money to Cohen after the 2016 election and hid the repayment by recording it as a false legal fee in his real estate company’s records.
Denies the allegations
Trump is accused of violating accounting and campaign finance laws when he paid $130,000 to porn star Stormy Daniels just weeks before the 2016 presidential election.
The reason is said to have been to silence Stormy Daniels who claims that they had a sexual relationship with each other, something Trump denied. But the indictment is about whether the payment was made to influence the election result and whether it was recorded illegally.
Trump denies the crime and has called it a “political persecution” and an “attack on the United States”. If convicted, he faces four years in prison, but he could also receive a suspended sentence.
Questioned witness
Cohen himself has previously been convicted and served a prison sentence for, among other things, lying to Congress. And as a witness, Michael Cohen has been questioned. Trump’s defense suggests that he is doing this as revenge.
– They push themselves to that and that he now wants to expose Trump to a personal vendetta and that he is in no way credible, says Stefan Åsberg.