NEW YORK (AP) — Manhattan prosecutors on Monday delved into their case against Donald Trump.
The testimony on Monday came to the heart of the first legislative lawsuit against a former U. S. president (and, as Judge Juan Merchan noted, potentially long-term). This vexing core of the case centers on the allegation that Trump falsified 34 business records as part of a conspiracy to circumvent the crusade’s financial legislation in the 2016 election.
The result was a decidedly unsalty day of testimony, especially after two weeks of witnesses who dragged jurors into a sordid world of sensational catch-and-kill stories. Instead, prosecutors made a slow, detailed, and outright presentation: that Trump Organization workers carried out orders to create false business records as part of a scheme to reimburse Michael Cohen for secret invoices to Stormy Daniels.
And this comes halfway through the process, with the prosecutor now focusing on the main points of fees similar to the most important commercial cases. Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass said at the end of Monday’s hearing that the prosecutor planned just over two weeks of testimony before concluding.
Two former Trump operatives testified about the plan on Monday. The first, former Trump Organization comptroller Jeff McConney. The second, the company’s accounts receivable supervisor, Deborah Tarasoff.
Prosecutor Matthew Colangelo accompanied the two witnesses through the months of payments, made in increments of $35,000, to pay Cohen a total of $420,000 in reimbursement for his work on the Daniels case. McConney spent the morning describing the invoices, which he considered part of his comptroller’s office, while Tarasoff showed how the checks issued in reaction were recorded in the Trump Organization’s accounting software and how the checks themselves were drafted and signed.
McConney and Tarasoff described how the bills were classified as “legal fees,” pursuant to a service contract McConney said he never saw.
This, however, leaves some questions unanswered. Just because McConney has never seen a mandate deal doesn’t mean there never will be one; after all, he’s a worker who oversaw the monetary system that kept the Trump organization running. And, as Trump’s lawyers have suggested, the accounting branch’s incorrectly describing the goal of a series of bills does not in itself implicate Trump.
Perhaps the most persuasive testimony, therefore, is not the summary of the entries themselves, but the context provided through the witnesses.
McConney testified on two critical points: the fact that Trump was incredibly frugal when it came to paying contractors and the way Cohen’s reimbursement was calculated.
During opening arguments, defense attorney Todd Blanche warned that it wouldn’t have made sense for Trump to reimburse Cohen $420,000 when the secret payment was only $130,000.
But prosecutors produced memos created by Allen Weisselberg, the Trump organization’s former chief financial officer, and McConney himself, to prove otherwise: that the $420,000 included an adjustment to ensure Cohen earned the full $420,000 after taxes and to cover reimbursement for a separate $50,000 expense. A line in a notebook shown to jurors read “TDD monthly transfer. “McConney told prosecutors he was referring to Trump’s private accounts.
Payment records prosecutors showed jurors through dozens of pieces of evidence suggest a cash flow that began in Trump’s private account or in a revocable agreement with an account in his name, and went to a company Cohen had set up to obtain payment.
But even that probably wouldn’t have been enough. Prosecutors also had to show that Trump likely steered the bills and was guilty of their accounting.
They did so in part by seeking to get the two witnesses to show that Trump paid close attention to detail when it came to the money coming out of the Trump Organization as a whole, and from his bank account in particular.
At the beginning of his testimony, McConney told a memorable anecdote in this regard: He entered Trump’s office while the future president was on the phone. Trump looked up, told McConney “you’re fired” and then hung up.
McConney was not fired, and Trump instead lightly reprimanded his worker: His checking account balance had decreased. Trump, McConney testified, told him to “focus on my bills” and that if someone “asked him for money,” he would have to “negotiate. “with them. “
Tarasoff gave a more concrete version of the same point. He testified that, according to the Trump organization’s corporate policy, until 2015, any bill over $2,500 had to be approved through Trump himself or one of his two sons. After 2015, this restriction increased to $10,000.
Tarasoff gave this to prosecutors as he passed the bills to Cohen: $35,000 each, for a total of $420,000.
Much of that dissent was shown to jurors (and journalists) in the form of checks from Trump’s private accounts, with his signature on some of them.
Throughout this period, Trump has emphasized that he will relinquish control over the day-to-day operation of his companies. At a press conference in January 2017, shortly before taking office, he said the assets would be placed in a deal with controlled through his sons.
After years of scandals, from questions about foreign spending at home to his bid to stay in power after the 2020 election, Trump’s circumvention of legislation and conflict-of-interest principles around his business empire may seem outdated. But it also highlights some of the other points: Her children never checked her confidence. For the most vital transactions, it was Donald.
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