‘Be nice to me,’ Trump warns
Donald Trump fired a “shot across the bows” by warning expected witnesses to “be nice” when they testify against him, a prosecutor has told the judge overseeing his trial.
The former president described one of the witnesses as “very nice” and “a nice guy” in remarks prosecutors cast as a calculated attempt to intimidate others due to testify against him.
“His statements are corrosive to this proceeding and the fair administration of justice,” Chris Conroy, for the prosecution, told Judge Juan Merchan during a hearing to consider if remarks Trump has made about witnesses and jurors have breached a “gag order” imposed by the court.
Trump is accused of falsifying business records to conceal a so-called hush money payment made via his then lawyer Michael Cohen to the porn star Stormy Daniels in the weeks before the 2016 presidential election, to stop her from talking about an affair she claimed to have had with Trump.
Prosecutors allege that a second payment, to silence another woman, was co-ordinated with the publisher of the National Enquirer, David Pecker. Trump denies the charges.
“David’s been very nice,” Trump said last week. “A nice guy.” Trump’s lawyer, David Blanche, said his client’s comments were “completely neutral”.
However, Conroy said it was a clear attempt to intimidate other witnesses. “This is classic carrot and stick,” he said.
It was a “deliberate” effort to say: “Pecker be nice ... I have a platform. I will be talking about you. They are deliberate shots across the bow to everyone who may come to the courtroom to tell the truth about the defendant and what he did.”
Trump’s lawyer, Todd Blanche, complained that others, including US President Joe Biden, had made remarks about expected witnesses, referring to a joke Biden made over the weekend about how his rival was facing “stormy weather”.
Judge Merchan, who noted that others including Biden were not defendants in the case, appeared more concerned about remarks Trump has made about the jury, saying it was “picked so fast” and it was “95% Democrats”.
The conclusion anyone would draw from his comments would be “that this is not a fair jury”, the judge said. He is expected to rule on the alleged breaches later.
Legal arguments over Trump’s comments came at the head of a day of testimony from a lawyer who represented Stormy Daniels in the alleged hush money payment and was later tasked with issuing a series of denials, which she signed, that she and Trump had a romantic liaison.
Keith Davidson, a Los Angeles lawyer who represents celebrities, said all the statements he drafted for Daniels were true if subjected to an “extremely fine reading.”
He denied that the interactions between Trump and Daniels were either “romantic” or constituted a “relationship”, and contested the term “hush money”, saying: “It was a consideration for a settlement.”
Daniels signed one such statement ahead of an appearance on the late night show Jimmy Kimmel Live. Asked about it on the show, however, Daniels suggested that it was not her signature, prompting a barrage of text messages from Trump’s then lawyer Michael Cohen. Davidson said he texted Cohen back saying: “WTF”
Davidson said it was one of many exchanges he had with Cohen in the months after the alleged US$130,000 (NZ$220,000) hush money payment, as Trump ascended to the presidency. Cohen, after delays in which he said he was trying to get Trump to sign off on the payment, eventually said “F*** it I’ll just do it myself”.
A month after the election, Davidson said Cohen called sounding distraught. “I thought he was going to kill himself.”
He said Cohen had thought he would be given a position at the White House; that he might even be made attorney-general of the United States. He was not.
“He used very colourful language about that stage of his life,” Davidson said. “He said: ‘I can’t believe I’m not going to Washington. I’ve saved that guy’s ass so many times you don’t even know’.”
Cross-examined by Trump’s lawyer, Emil Bove, Davidson was asked about previous cases he had handled and whether he had tried to “extract” money from celebrities. “You’re describing a few different incidents: I don’t know what you are referring to,” he replied.