Visit our website:
http://www.france24.com
Like us on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/FRANCE24.English
Follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/France24_en
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 Donald Trump's one-time fixer and the star prosecution witness at his criminal
00:04 trial has told of how he paid the porn actress Stormy Daniels to hush up
00:08 catastrophic revelations against Trump. Michael Cohen, often described as Trump's
00:13 attacked doll, gave calm evidence against him. Trump accused of falsifying
00:18 business records to reimburse Cohen for a $130,000 hush money payment before the
00:24 2016 election when her claims of a sexual encounter with Trump could have
00:28 doomed his campaign. Let's hear first of all Trump's reaction to what happened in
00:33 court.
00:35 Donald Trump there. Well let's have the latest then from the trial from a
00:55 correspondent in New York, Jessica Lemus Urie.
01:00 Listening to Michael Cohen's testimony this Monday from the courtroom was at times like hearing the inner workings of the mob.
01:08 Cohen described a plan to pay former porn star Stormy Daniels to stay quiet
01:13 about her alleged sexual liaison with Trump in great detail and each point was
01:18 supported by phone logs and bank statements. Some court reporters had
01:22 binoculars with them to be able to closely view each of these documents as
01:27 they were presented on a screen as evidence. Now Cohen said that he called
01:30 Trump twice to get the sign off right before opening an account at New
01:35 Republic Bank on October 26th 2016 and this account was used in the transfer he
01:41 said of the hush money payment to Stormy Daniels. But would you have made that
01:45 payment to Stormy Daniels without getting the sign off from Trump? The
01:48 prosecution asked Cohen no he said because everything he said required Mr.
01:54 Trump's sign off and on top of that I wanted to get the money back.
01:58 Well Cohen's testimony appeared to build on and corroborate testimony given by
02:02 other witnesses in this trial. There were also some amusing moments including
02:07 details of from Cohen about how he hid this hush money payment from his wife.
02:12 Now perhaps the most important part of Cohen's testimony however was when he
02:16 said that Trump personally participated in a meeting at Trump Tower in 2017 in
02:20 which he approved a plan to reimburse Cohen for the money that he paid
02:24 Stormy Daniels. The prosecution has not yet finished questioning Cohen that's
02:29 going to continue on Tuesday and after that it will be the turn of Trump's
02:32 lawyers who will try to convince the jury that Trump didn't know anything
02:36 about these hush money payments. They will also do their best to present Cohen
02:41 as a liar but even if Cohen has a history of lying with all of this
02:45 evidence shown today on Monday Trump's lawyers are really going to have their
02:50 work cut out for them. Jessica Lemaguire they are correspondent in New York.