MANHATTAN (CN) — Then-President Donald Trump signed checks reimbursing his ex-lawyer and “fixer” Michael Cohen from the Oval Office in 2017, a former Trump Organization executive testified Monday.
“Somehow we would have to get a package down to the White House, get it down to the president, get the president to sign the checks, get the checks returned to us and then have the checks mailed out,” said Jeff McConney, the former Trump Organization controller.
Prosecutors say those checks were reimbursements for hush-money that Cohen paid to adult film star Stormy Daniels, who claims to have an extramarital encounter with Trump that may have threatened his 2016 presidential run. Trump stands accused of covering up those payments — which were accounted as standard legal services — by falsifying business records to mask the scheme.
McConney took the stand at Trump’s Manhattan criminal trial on Monday, where he told the court that Trump signed monthly checks to Cohen after Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 not to share her story.
Prosecutors pulled up handwritten notes from former Trump Organization CFO Alen Weisselberg, showing the numbers that he and McConney crunched to determine how much Trump owed Cohen.
McConney said that they arrived at $420,000, which broke down as a $130,000 payment Cohen made to Daniels’ lawyer Keith Davidson and a $50,000 tech expense. McConney claimed they multiplied those expenses by two to account for New York taxes, which prosecutors note is an unusual practice, and added an additional $60,000 as a bonus for Cohen.
“Michael was complaining that his bonus wasn’t large enough for the prior year,” McConney said. “This was, I guess, to make up for whatever he thought he was owed.”
That $420,000 was broken down into monthly payments of $35,000, which Cohen invoiced every month with a formulaic, inconspicuous email that made it seem like he was billing legal fees.
“Pursuant to the retainer agreement, kindly remit payment for services rendered for April,” Cohen wrote in a 2017 email to Weisselberg.
McConney said that the checks were then “drawn out of President Trump’s personal account.”
No stranger to testifying in the former president’s recent state proceedings, McConney made an appearance at Trump’s civil fraud trial last year. At one point, he was brought to tears when he recalled resigning from his post after several decades at the Trump Organization.
McConney’s testimony in this trial was brief and less emotional. He was released from the stand by Monday afternoon.
He was followed by Deborah Tarasoff, the accounts payable supervisor at the Trump Organization, who delivered dry but substantive testimony that walked the jury through each of the 34 business records Trump is accused of falsifying. Those records include 11 invoices, 12 ledger entries and 11 checks, all of which surrounded Cohen’s monthly reimbursement.
Each invoice from Cohen was under the guise of standard services, while each ledger entry was simply labeled as a “retainer” for Cohen with the month. Each check was signed by Trump himself, Tarasoff testified, with the funds pulled from his personal account.
Neither Tarasoff nor McConney testified that Trump instructed them to hide the true purpose behind Cohen’s payments. In fact, both said Monday that they weren’t privy to Trump’s inner-circle meetings and rarely spoke with him at all. Based on the pair’s testimonies, Trump kept only a small group in the know — his sons Eric and Don Jr., Cohen and Weisselberg, who is currently serving his second stint at Rikers Island for perjury in the Trump civil case.
Trump faces 34 counts of falsifying business records related to his payments to Cohen. Prosecutors claim that it was part of a broader scheme to interfere with the 2016 election by covering up information that was potentially damaging to his campaign.
Before the jury was brought out on Monday, Trump was again held in contempt after New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan ruled that he violated his gag order for a 10th time. Merchan fined Trump $1,000 and chided his “continued violations” of court orders, threatening him with jail time if he keeps it up.
“I cannot allow that to continue,” Merchan said. “So as much as I do not want to impose a jail sanction … I want you to understand that I will, if necessary and appropriate.”
Prosecutors estimate that they will wrap up their case the week of May 20.
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