Trump trial Day 9 highlights: Judge rules Trump violated gag order

The former president approached news cameras in the courthouse hallway where he complained about the gag order, which he was fined $9,000 for violating earlier in the day.

Trump hit on familiar themes, accusing Judge Merchan of bias and of rushing the case, and saying he should be out campaigning instead.

Trump leaves as court wraps for the day.

As he did so, the former president pressed in to view the message on a monitor in front of him on the defense table. He then leaned over to whisper something to his lawyer Todd Blanche, sitting at his left, as the messages flashed by on the screen — rendered as a spreadsheet in black text on a green background.

Trump and Blanche whispered back and forth intermittently as Davidson continued testifying about the text message.

In the October 2016 message to Davidson, Howard was commenting on Cohen’s apparent reluctance to make good on an agreed-upon $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels.

“All because trump is tight,” Howard wrote in one of the messages, which Davidson said was a reference to Trump’s purported frugality. In a follow up message, the editor wrote: “I reckon that trump impersonator I hired has more cash.”

Three times in the waning minutes of Tuesday’s testimony, Trump was left alone at the defense table as Judge Merchan summoned the lawyers to the bench to discuss matters outside the jury’s earshot.

During one of the interruptions, Trump lawyer Todd Blanche turned to Eric Trump in the gallery and chuckled before going up to the bench.

Asked if Cohen ever told him whom he was representing in the Daniels negotiations, Davidson said the ex-lawyer may not have explicitly stated he was working on Trump’s behalf — but the implication was clear.

“Every single time I talked to Michael Cohen, he leaned on his close affiliation with Donald Trump,” Davidson said. “It was part of his identity. He let me know it at every opportunity he could that he was working for Donald Trump.”

Steinglass tried to probe whether Davidson had been told that someone other than Cohen was going to fund the $130,000 Daniels payout. Defense objections blocked Davidson from answering that exactly, but he said he understood Trump was the ultimate beneficiary of the contract. He added that “in the overwhelming majority of cases, the beneficiary is the one who funds it,” but the judge told jurors to disregard that part after the defense objected to it.

With Stormy Daniels’ deal with Michael Cohen done, but the money unpaid, Davidson and Howard texted each other about what the then Enquirer editor in chief called an “impending storm” of publicity if the performer took her story somewhere else, according to Davidson’s testimony and documents shown at the trial.

In the exchange, on Oct. 17 and Oct. 18, 2016, Davidson wrote to Howard that he believed Daniels and her agent had agreed to bring her story to another publication, and “I think it’ll be a full-on blitz.”

“I just felt like there was going to be more than a flurry of activity. I felt like it was going to be a tornado,” Davidson explained in court.

“If the story got out,” Steinglass asked.

“Yes,” Davidson said.

Before the break, Davidson testified that though both parties had reached a deal, the payment to Daniels didn’t materialize by the agreed upon date.

At first, Cohen offered a litany of explanations for the delay, at turns blaming broken computers, Secret Service “firewalls,” and the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur. “The things he was saying didn’t really make sense,” Davidson said of Cohen.

As the excuses piled up, Davidson said he understood that Cohen “didn’t have the authority to actually spend money.” He eventually sent an email informing Cohen that the deal was off.

“I thought he was trying to kick the can down the round until after the election,” Davidson said.

Trump walked back into the courtroom holding his cellphone in his right hand.

Trump did not speak to reporters as he left the courtroom for the afternoon break.

As testimony continued Tuesday, a five-judge panel in the state’s mid-level appellate court rejected Trump’s request for a stay of the proceedings while he appeals several pretrial rulings, including the trial judge’s refusal to recuse himself.

Trump had sought the stay prior to the start of jury selection. A lone judge in the appeals court had previously rejected a request for an emergency stay halting the trial.

In drawing up the deal, Davidson said he’d used a pair of pseudonyms to disguise the parties involved: Stormy Daniels became Peggy Peterson; Donald Trump became David Dennison.

The alliterative code names were picked, in part, because Daniels was the plaintiff and Trump was the defendant, the lawyer testified.

Asked if David Dennison was a real person, Davidson responded that he played on his high school hockey team.

“And how does he feel about you now?” wondered prosecutor Josh Steinglass.

Davidson stifled a laugh, then answered: “He’s very upset.”

Soon after the “Access Hollywood” tape leaked, Davidson testified, Daniels’ agent reached a deal with then-National Enquirer editor Dylan Howard for the tabloid to acquire the rights to her story for $120,000, but Howard backed out of the deal.

The editor instead told Daniels’ agent, Rodriguez, to call Michael Cohen and complete the deal directly with him -- but she refused to speak with Cohen after their uncomfortable prior interaction. Rodriguez asked Davidson to step in and negotiate the deal with Cohen, the lawyer testified.

Davidson said he had numerous interactions with Howard over the years regarding stories. Asked if it was unusual for Howard to direct him to make a deal with a third party like Cohen, Davidson responded: “This is the only time that ever happened.”

“In essence, Michael Cohen stepped into AMI’s shoes,” Davidson said, referring to the name of the Enquirer’s parent company at the time, American Media Inc.

Davidson testified that in negotiating with Cohen, he hiked the price to $130,000 — building in his fee for his work on the deal.

Davidson testified that the leak of Trump’s 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape had “tremendous influence” on the marketability of Daniels’ story.

He said Daniels’ agent, Gina Rodriguez, had been trying to drum up interest in her story earlier in the 2016 election cycle but found there wasn’t much.

Asked to describe the “Access Hollywood” tape, which can’t be shown in court, Davidson testified that it involved Trump and the show’s then-host Billy Bush being recorded on a “hot mic” and “some statements by both men that were troublesome.”

Davidson testified that his first interaction with Michael Cohen related to a 2011 post on a gossip blog that stated Stormy Daniels and Donald Trump had “some sort of physical or romantic interaction.”

After the blog post was published, Davidson said, Daniels’ agent, Gina Rodriguez, called him and said “some jerk” had called “and was very, very aggressive” and threatened to sue.

Asked who the “jerk” was, Davidson said: “Michael Cohen.”

Davidson testified that when he called Cohen, the ex-Trump lawyer greeted him “with a hostile barrage of insults and insinuations that went on for quite a while.”

“Finally, after he finished, I explained to him that I was calling because my client, Stormy Daniels, did not want the story up. I wanted to see if he had done anything” to try to get the story taken down, Davidson said.

Davidson said that after the dust-up, he — not Cohen — eventually sent a cease-and-desist letter to the blog and the story was removed.

Asked why American Media Inc., the National Enquirer’s parent company, would buy a story it didn’t intend to run, Davidson said he was aware of two reasons.

“One explanation I was given is they were trying to build Karen into a brand and didn’t want to diminish her reputation,” he said. “And the second was an unspoken understanding that there was an affiliation between David Pecker and Donald Trump and that AMI wouldn’t run this story, any story related to Karen, because it would hurt Donald Trump.”

The deal for McDougal’s story did eventually close, Davidson testified, with the former Playboy model receiving a $150,000 payment as well as the promise of magazine covers and regular columns for publications owned by the National Enquirer’s parent company, American Media Inc.

Davidson testified that once the deal was done, he called Cohen as a professional courtesy because the agreement involved his client, Donald Trump.

Trump wasn’t a named party to the tabloid’s agreement with McDougal. Still, Davidson acknowledged Tuesday that burying her claims would be of value to Trump’s campaign.

Asked by prosecutor Joshua Steinglass how Cohen reacted to news of the deal’s closing, Davidson testified matter-of-factly: “He was pleased.”

After lunch, questioning picked up with Davidson describing the back-and-forth haggling involved in selling the former Playboy model’s story to the tabloid empire.

In one text message shown to jurors, Davidson told Enquirer editor Dylan Howard that “they are asking me to go back for another 25,” meaning another $25,000. Howard responded with an expletive, adding, “Not my money. I’ll ask.”

But even as they reached a basic framework for the deal, Davidson described his “growing frustration with the process.” At one point, Davidson said he was pushed to call former Trump attorney Michael Cohen directly, something he said he had been trying to avoid.

“I thought it was odd, certainly,” Davidson said about being asked to call Cohen. “I didn’t particularly like dealing with him and that’s why I was trying like hell to avoid talking to him,” he added.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton walked into the courtroom with Trump after lunch.

The Republican is sitting in the first row of the courtroom gallery directly behind the defense table. He’s a few seats away from Trump’s son, Eric, who’s sitting near the aisle with Susie Wiles, a Trump political operative.

Trump gave a fist pump to reporters, but did not stop to speak on his way back into the courtroom.

The posts were deleted ahead of the judge’s 2:15 p.m. ET deadline, while court was in recess for lunch.

Links to the old Truth Social posts redirected to a “Not found” message, while those to Trump’s website redirected to a 404 error page.

Earlier Tuesday, Judge Merchan fined Trump $9,000 for the nine posts for violating the order, which bars him from making public statements about witnesses and jurors.

Trump did not stop to talk to reporters as he left. The trial will resume at 2:15 p.m. ET.

Davidson arranged a meeting at his Los Angeles office to see whether the National Enquirer’s parent company was interested in McDougal’s story. But Howard, the Enquirer’s then editor in chief, told him afterwards that the tabloid wasn’t keen because she “lacked documentary evidence of the interaction,” Davidson testified.

A month after their initial lunch meeting, Howard reached out again to Davidson, suggesting they should resume discussions about the story. At the time, Davidson warned that American Media Inc, the Enquirer’s parent company, would need to move quickly.

Davidson testified that McDougal was “teetering” at the time he sent the message and was on the verge of signing a deal to tell her story to ABC News.

Davidson said he was playing the Enquirer and ABC News against each other to get the best deal for McDougal. The former Playboy model didn’t want to tell her story publicly, which would’ve been required if she went to ABC, he said.

Shortly after Davidson began representing McDougal, he reached out to Dylan Howard, the editor in chief of the National Enquirer, promising a “blockbuster Trump story.”

Howard replied soon after: “I will get you more than ANYONE for it. You know why.”

As the text messages were displayed on screens to the jury, Davidson testified he didn’t know exactly what Howard meant at the time. But, he noted that he knew Howard’s boss, David Pecker, and Trump were “longtime friends and had a former business relationship.”

Among Howard’s follow up texts to Davidson, as shown in court, were: “Did he cheat on Melania?” and “Do you know if the affair was during his marriage to Melania?”

“I really can’t say yet, sorry,” Davidson had replied.

Asked by Steinglass about what McDougal was claiming, Davidson testified: “Ms. McDougal had alleged that she had a romantic affair with Donald Trump some years prior.”

Trump has denied this.

As questioning turned toward Davidson’s involvement in some of the hush money deals, he says he met McDougal 25 years ago through a friend. He started representing the former Playboy model in 2016 “to provide advice and counsel as to what her rights and obligations would be regarding a personal interaction that she had.”

“With whom?” Steinglass asked.

“Donald Trump.”

Jurors appeared attentive as prosecutor Joshua Steinglass began questioning Davidson, with several switching their focus between the men as each one spoke and some members of the panel taking notes.

Keith Davidson is known for representing people trying to sell celebrity sex tapes or other embarrassing information.

He represented McDougal, a former Playboy model, and Daniels, a porn actor, in hush money negotiations with the National Enquirer and Trump’s then-lawyer Michael Cohen in 2016.

McDougal claimed she’d had a yearlong affair with Trump in the mid-2000s. Daniels claimed she had a one-time sexual encounter with him in 2006. Trump denies the allegations.

The next witness up is Phillip Thompson, an executive at a company that provides stenographers and videographers for depositions -- sworn, out-of-court statements under oath.

He’s here to authenticate portions of a transcript and video of a deposition Trump gave in one of writer E. Jean Carroll’s federal defamation lawsuits against him. The portions included Carroll’s lawyer asking Trump about his Truth Social platform, the dates of his marriage to wife Melania Trump and whether he was aware of the “Access Hollywood” tape.

The former longtime Elle magazine advice columnist alleges Trump sexually assaulted her in the 1990s and then defamed her after she came forward publicly in 2019. He says nothing happened between them and has accused her of engineering a “hoax” to sell a book. After two federal trials last year and this winter, juries awarded Carroll over $88 million. Trump is appealing.

Prosecutors played C-SPAN clips of Trump on the campaign trail in the final weeks of his 2016 campaign as he forcefully denied allegations made by several women after his infamous 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape was made public.

“The stories are total fiction. They’re 100% made up, they never happened, they never would happen,” Trump said at an Oct. 14, 2016 rally in North Carolina.

Another clip played for the jury, from January 2017, showed Trump praising Cohen as as good lawyer and friend.

Trump didn’t appear to react in court to the clips, which were played on monitors throughout the courtroom, including directly in front of him on the defense table.

After confirming the veracity of the clips, Browning, who manages C-SPAN’s video collection, was dismissed from the witness stand. Trump’s attorneys declined to question him.

Court won’t be in session on Friday, May 24 to accommodate a juror who has a flight that morning, Judge Merchan said.

That means the trial will be off for four straight days for the holiday weekend, resuming on Tuesday, May 28. Merchan also informed jurors there will not be court on May 17, though he didn’t give them a reason. That’s the day Trump will be attending his son Barron’s high school graduation.

Dr. Robert Browning, who manages the network’s video collection, was called to verify the authenticity of video of a Trump campaign event. Prosecutors are calling people who are regarded as “records custodians” to verify evidence.

Trump’s campaign is already fundraising off this morning’s ruling that he violated the court’s gag order.

“Democrat judge just ruled against me,” reads the subject line of a Tuesday morning email blast, which shares the news that, “A Democrat judge JUST HELD ME IN CONTEMPT OF COURT!”

“THEY WANT TO SILENCE ME!” the message continues, asking supporters to “STAND WITH TRUMP” by contributing money.

He waved to reporters but didn’t speak as he passed through a hallway.

Before the break, Assistant District Attorney Matthew Colangelo asked Judge Merchan to let prosecutors question the former president about his gag order violations should he choose to testify.

The judge previously ruled to allow prosecutors to challenge Trump’s credibility by questioning him about some of his recent legal setbacks if he ends up taking the witness stand.

Trump has said he wants to testify, but he is under no obligation to do so.

Prosecutors also requested permission from Merchan to introduce evidence they say shows Trump orchestrated a “pressure campaign and intimidation effort” against Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels.

Colangelo said Trump’s attorney had opened the door to that evidence by seeking to undermine the credibility of the two witnesses in opening statements.

Merchan did not immediately rule, but said, “the door has been opened.”

Trump did not stop to talk to reporters after he left the courtroom.

The banker had been answering questions about accounts he helped Michael Cohen, Trump’s former attorney, open.

Cross-examining Farro, Blanche, the defense lawyer, underscored that Cohen made no mention that the accounts he opened in October 2016 had anything to do with deals involving then-candidate Trump or his company.

If Cohen had done so, “I would have asked questions,” Farro said.

Farro also noted that he might not have opened an account if he’d been told it was for what’s known as a shell corporation – one that receives and sends out money but doesn’t have an underlying business.

But Cohen told the banker the account was for a real estate consulting business.

Nothing about it raised “any red flags to you?” Blanche asked.

“Not based upon the answers I was given to the questions I asked,” Farro said.

Trump attorney Todd Blanche began by asking Farro to once again describe his relationship with Michael Cohen.

Farro said he first met Cohen in person at a meeting in Trump Tower, but primarily communicated over the phone. Pushed by Blanche, Farro acknowledged that Cohen wasn’t always easy to work with.

“He was a challenging client because of his desire to get things done so quickly,” Farro said. “Ninety percent of the time it was an urgent matter.”

Within a day after opening the Essential Consultants LLC account on Oct. 26, 2016, and funding it with about $130,000 from his own home equity loan, Cohen wired out $130,000 to Keith Davidson, then a lawyer for Stormy Daniels, documents showed.

The 2016 presidential election was on Nov. 8.

Farro said Cohen indicated the transaction was related to a real estate transaction – not a political candidate, an adult film performer or buying up a potential media story.

“We might consider something like that a reputational risk,” Farro said.

“I stand with Trump,” Paxton said in a social media post about attending the trial.

Paxton is a close Trump ally.

Correction: An earlier version of this post incorrectly stated that Paxton had been with Trump at the Texas border in Eagle Pass earlier this year. Paxton had not been with Trump on that trip.

Testimony has resumed with Gary Farro, a banker who helped Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen open accounts. Cohen used one to buy the silence of porn performer Stormy Daniels in the weeks before the 2016 election. She alleged a 2006 sexual encounter with Trump, which he denies.

Cohen indicated the account, opened in late October 2016 in the name of Essential Consultants LLC, would be used for real estate consulting, according to testimony and documents shown at the trial.

In response to prosecutor Becky Mangold’s questions, Farro said the bank would have asked more questions if there had been any mention of a connection to a political candidate, buying a story that was being pitched to the media or paying a porn performer.

The additional scrutiny would have delayed or even nixed opening the account, which Cohen had wanted to open right away. In particular, the adult film world “is an industry we don’t work with,” he said.

With only real estate in the picture, the account was opened within a day -- “very quick,” Farro said.

Judge Merchan wrote that he was finding Trump “in criminal contempt for willfully disobeying a lawful mandate” of the court on nine separate occasions for posts made on Truth Social and his campaign website.

But Merchan ruled Trump’s April 10 post referring to Cohen and Daniels as “sleaze bags” was not a gag order violation. He said Trump’s contention that he was responding to previous posts by Cohen “is sufficient to give” him pause “as to whether the People have met their burden” as to that post.

However, the other nine “attack the credibility of arguably two of the more high-profile witnesses in this case.”

In his ruling, the judge warned that he’s willing to jail Trump if he violates court orders.

Merchan wrote that Trump “is hereby warned that the Court will not tolerate continued willful violations of its lawful orders and that if necessary and appropriate under the circumstances, it will impose an incarceratory punishment.”

The judge lamented that he was limited by law to fining Trump a maximum of $1,000 per violation, writing that while such an amount “may suffice in most instances to protect the dignity of the judicial system, to compel respect for its mandates and to punish the offender for disobeying a court order, it unfortunately will not achieve the desired result in those instances” where a person held in contempt “can easily afford such a fine.”

Merchan wrote that in such instances, it would be preferable if he could impose “a fine more commensurate with the wealth” of the person being fined. “Because this Court is not cloaked with such discretion, it must therefore consider whether in some instances, jail may be a necessary punishment,” the judge concluded.

Prosecutors alleged the former president had violated the order -- which bars him from making public statements about witnesses and jurors -- 10 times, and the judge concurred in all but one of those cases. Merchan will hold a hearing Thursday on four more alleged violations.

Trump stared down at the table in front of him as the judge read the ruling, frowning slightly but otherwise showing no expression.

The ruling is a rebuke for the former president who had insisted he was exercising his free speech rights. The ruling came at the start of the second week of testimony in the historic case.

▶ Read the full gag order ruling.

Judge Juan M. Merchan says Donald Trump’s criminal trial will not be held on May 17 so the former president may attend the event.

“I don’t think the May 17 date is a problem, so Mr. Trump can certainly attend that date, attend his son’s graduation,” Merchan said.

It’s the first time a member of his family has attended his criminal trial.

In the courtroom, Trump turned from the defense table and walked over to his son in the first row of the gallery. Trump put his hand on his son’s arm as they chatted prior to the resumption of proceedings.

As usual, Trump addressed reporters before court to rail against this and his other legal cases.

He once again downplayed the 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, calling it “peanuts” compared to the student protests currently roiling college campuses.

A crowd of around 60 Trump supporters has gathered across the street from the courthouse, carrying Trump and American flags on tall poles.

The former president’s motorcade pulled up to the courthouse in lower Manhattan a little after 8:50 a.m. ET.

The former president entered his motorcade outside Trump Tower in midtown, headed to the courthouse in lower Manhattan for the second week of trial testimony.