Jurors in former President Donald Trump’s felon trial in New York heard testimony Monday about how business records were crafted amid the case, and lawyers questioned two Trump Organization workers about their involvement in billing Michael Cohen.
Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records and has pleaded not guilty. Each of those accounts corresponds to a record of a series of monthly invoices to Cohen in 2017.
Prosecutors say the budget ($35,000 a month) was meant to reimburse Cohen for the $130,000 he paid adult film star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election, plus a bonus and enough cash to cover taxes. In return, Daniels agreed to remain silent about an alleged sexual relationship with Trump years earlier, which he denies.
Two witnesses involved in the bills to Cohen told jurors Monday how they were treated internally. Jeffrey McConney, the Trump Organization’s longtime comptroller, recalled how the company’s chief financial officer ordered him to pay Cohen in monthly installments starting in February 2017.
Initially, the checks came from an agreement put in place to manage Trump’s assets during his tenure. They eventually came from Trump’s private account, an update that meant his signature was required.
Deborah Tarasoff, an accountant for the Trump Organization, told jurors how she processed Cohen’s expenses and how she signed the checks. “We would send them to the White House for him to sign,” Tarasoff said, referring to Trump. Payments have been documented in the general ledger entries.
Earlier in the day, Judge Juan Merchan held Trump in contempt of court for violating his gag order in the case for the 10th time. Merchan fined Trump $1,000 and warned him that he could be sentenced to a criminal penalty for long-term crimes.
Here’s how the day went, just as it happened:
Addressing the court, Judge Juan Merchan said he is holding Trump in contempt of court for the 10th time and fining him an additional $1,000 for violating the gag order that restricts what Trump can say about people involved in the case. He warned that the punishment would be harsher if Trump continued to violate the order.
“It turns out that $1,000 fines are not a deterrent. Therefore, in the future, this court will have to impose a criminal sentence if it recommends it,” Merchan said.
In his written order, Merchan said Trump violated the order in an interview he gave on April 22. “This jury selected very quickly: 95% Democrats. The region is overwhelmingly Democratic,” Trump said on Real America’s Voice. “It’s a very unfair decision. “
Trump, Merchan wrote, “has not only called for the integrity, and therefore legitimacy, of those proceedings, but has also raised the specter of concern for the protection of jurors and their loved ones. “
Merchan said three other cases brought through prosecutors, and two of them involving Cohen, violated the order.
“Mr. Trump, the last thing I have to do is put you in jail. You are a former president of the United States and the next one as well,” Merchan said from the podium, acknowledging that “to take that step would be to disrupt the process. “
He said he was concerned about the fate of judicial officials and secret service agents tasked with protecting the former president.
“I’m worried about them and what it would mean to execute such a penalty,” Merchan said. “I don’t understand the magnitude of such a resolution. “
“At the end of the day, I have a task to do, and a part of that task is the dignity” of the procedures and the criminal justice system, Merchan said, adding that violations of the gag order “are a direct attack on the rule. ” of the law. I can’t let this continue. “
A guy who for decades was called to testify by one of the most sensible leaders of the Trump Organization on Monday.
Jeffrey McConney, the company’s retired comptroller, is no stranger to the booth. He testified at the Trump Organization felon trial in 2022, where the company was found guilty of 17 counts similar to tax evasion. York Attorney General Letitia James in the company’s civil fraud lawsuit, in which Trump and others were found liable for hundreds of millions of dollars in ill-gotten gains.
McConney is expected to testify about the company’s payment mechanisms and monetary decisions. Prosecutors said he told a worker to record the bills to Cohen as bills for ongoing legal services, rather than reimbursements for wire transfers from Cohen to Daniels.
A giant organization of advisers and lawyers is accompanying Trump to court today.
Eric Trump is here for the second time since the debates began. He is seated next to Alina Habba, who in the past represented the first witness of the day, Jeffrey McConney, in the civil fraud case. She did not attend this trial.
Alan Garten, general representative of the Trump Organization, will also be in attendance.
Trump’s advisers, Boris Epshteyn and Jason Miller, are also on the court. This is unusual.
One user was not present: Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who forgoes attending those proceedings while running one of the largest district attorney’s offices in the country.
As much as this lawsuit has to do with salacious headlines and sensationalist dramas, it also has to do with accounting.
McConney explained how Cohen’s transfer of $130,000 to Daniels’ attorney in October 2016 resulted in a series of 12 monthly invoices to Cohen for $35,000, for a total of $420,000.
McConney recounted a verbal exchange with the Trump Organization’s former monetary leader, Allen Weisselberg, in January 2017, around the time Trump took office.
McConney said Weisselberg arrived with a notebook and said he needed to discuss the bills with Cohen.
“He threw the notepad at me and said, ‘Get that out,'” McConney said, adding that he also won a copy of a Cohen bank showing his $130,000 wire move to Daniels’ attorney. Jurors saw McConney’s notes from that day, which gave the impression of being under the letterhead of “Trump. “
The notes showed a series of scribbled calculations, with a base salary of $180,000 (for Daniels’ transfer, plus $50,000 he had paid to a tech company) doubled to $360,000.
McConney said doubling down on a practice called “margin,” in which the company guarantees higher bills to executives to offset a potential 50% tax rate.
In addition to the $360,000, there is a $60,000 bonus, which McConney had erroneously indexed as $50,000 before correcting the total. McConney said Cohen complained that he didn’t receive a big enough bonus in late 2016, and that this was aimed at remedying that problem.
The notes included calculations, reflected in writings through Weisselberg in Cohen’s statements: $420,000 divided into 12 equal monthly bills of $35,000.
Finally, toward the bottom, McConney wrote a note that he said meant the bills had to come from Trump’s bank account: “DJT Monthly Movement. “
Despite this instruction, the first checks were sent through a bank set up to retain Trump’s assets while he was in office. His arms were Weisselberg and Trump’s two adult children.
But in late March of that year, they made the decision that future bills would come directly from Trump’s personal account. That meant the only user who could sign them would be the president of the United States, McConney said.
“At some point, we had to start sending the checks to the White House for President Trump to sign,” McConney said. “It’s a totally new procedure for us. “
U. S. Attorney Matthew Colangelo concluded his direct review of McConney by consulting Trump’s 2018 Office of Government Ethics file.
It includes a note that Trump paid Cohen in 2017 for the 2016 rendering. The form indexed an amount between $100,000 and $250,000, well below the $420,000 Cohen earned in 2017.
During cross-examination, Trump’s lawyer, Emil Bove, presented the documentation of the invoices to Cohen as true ongoing legal invoices, as opposed to the re-invoices for his payment to Stormy Daniels.
He noted that Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s top monetary official, never specified what the bills were for, or what he meant when he told McConney to “raise” the payment.
Invoices and accounting entries imply that the invoices were converted to a “down payment. “Prosecutors said no such deal existed.
“Service contracts can be verbal, can’t they?” Bové asked. McConney agreed.
U. S. Attorney Matthew Colanegelo asked whether, after leaving the Trump Organization, McConney learned “that there was any issue that Mr. Colanegelo was involved in. “Weisselberg had kept him in the dark. “
“Yes,” McConney said.
After a lunch break, prosecutors introduce their next witness: Deborah Tarasoff, accounts payable manager for the Trump Organization.
The emails show McConney sent Cohen’s first bill to Tarasoff in February 2017 and asked him, “Pay the Trust. Post the legal fees. Put ‘deposit for the months of January and February 2017’ in the description. “
Prosecutors said McConney did this with all of Cohen’s bills and Tarasoff recorded one as legal fees. He then prepared the checks that were used to pay Cohen.
Tarasoff, who said he ran for the Trump Organization in 2000, described how invoices are treated at the company and his role in the process.
“I get approved invoices. I put them in the system, cut the checks and mail them,” he said, noting that he has no authority to make decisions about what expenses will be approved and follows orders. of others.
Tarasoff said leaders of the Trump Organization approve spending first, based on the amount. He said that as of 2015, Allen Weisselberg, the chief financial officer, can only sign bills under $10,000. If the bill were to pass, Tarasoff would then cut the check. along with a backup, and take it to the appropriate official for signaling.
Only Trump can sign checks drawn on his private account. She said that’s still the case today. Tarasoff also said Trump refused to sign and returned the check with “Null” written in black Sharpie on the back.
Starting in February 2017, Cohen sent invoices requesting his monthly payments of $35,000. Cohen’s first two checks, representing three monthly payments, came from Trump’s acceptance account as true, which did not require his signature. The first was signed by Eric Trump and Allen Weisselberg, both directors. Weisselberg and Donald Trump Jr. , also a director, signed the second check.
The remaining nine monthly bills came from Trump’s private account. Those checks required Trump’s signature.
“We would send them to the White House for them to sign,” Tarasoff said, adding that they were sent by FedEx.
The jury saw checks on Cohen’s call and signed by Trump while he was president, as well as checks signed by his children on Trump’s confidence call. Trump’s signature written with his Sharpie brand.