Interesting testimony Tuesday afternoon from Keith Davidson, the failed Hollywood lawyer who represented former Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal and porn star Stormy Daniels, raises interesting questions.
Will a jury accept the testimony of a witness who clearly despises Michael Cohen, which strengthens the story of the case? My bet is that it will.
Prosecutors used a devastating series of texts to establish in advance that Cohen’s upcoming testimony was the most important in the case. Throughout the afternoon, prosecutor Joshua Steinglass used Davidson to give jurors license to trust Cohen and believe him at the same time.
Davidson first met Cohen in 2011, when the celebrity website dirty.com posted an article alleging that Donald Trump was having an affair with a porn star named Stormy Daniels. That’s when Davidson called Cohen.
“The barrage of hostile insults and suspicions continued for quite some time before I could barely get my name published,” Davidson testified. “He was just screaming. He believed Stormy Daniels was behind this story.” In fact, Mr. Davidson removed the item.
Much of Mr. Davidson’s testimony implicated Mr. McDougal, whose hush-money deal was a rehearsal for the alleged crime of concealing hush money paid by Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen to Stormy Daniels. It was something like that. American Media, the owner of the National Enquirer, was at one point in a battle with ABC News over McDougal’s reporting, which led to a memorable moment in court. Ms Davidson claimed that a group of women she derided in text messages as the “estrogen mafia” had asked her to tell her story to ABC News.
“We had everything set up. We chose the date, the photographer, the makeup,” ABC News correspondent Brian Ross told me by phone this afternoon. “Then she called me and said, ‘My family doesn’t want me to do this.'” The real reason this shocking article never got published was because they didn’t pay for it. Ross thinks it’s because ABC News has become a lever. “In hindsight, they were using us to get closer to Trump for money.”
After American Media paid McDougal, former publisher David Pecker withdrew his hush money payment to Stormy Daniels.
But when Mr. Davidson demanded payment, Mr. Cohen began offering a million excuses as to why Mr. Trump couldn’t pay. “I thought he was trying to kick the can until after the election,” Davidson testified, which will be a key part of the prosecutor’s case.
When it was clear that Trump would not pay, Davidson testified that Cohen said, “Damn, I’ll do it myself.” That’s when Mr. Cohen set up a dummy corporation and sent money to Mr. Davidson in an attempt to get repayments from Mr. Trump.
All text messages and phone calls between Mr. Davidson and Mr. Cohen are one step away from President Trump. But they corroborated in advance that Mr. Cohen would say he was told to do it by “his boss,” which is crucial.
April 30, 2024
:
An earlier version of this article’s headline misidentified the woman whose description of her relationship with Donald Trump was the subject of a competition between two media organizations. She’s Karen McDougall, not Stormy Daniels. Additionally, due to an editing error, an earlier version of this article incorrectly identified her in one of these news outlets. It was American Media, the owner of several tabloid newspapers at the time, especially not the National Enquirer.
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