Before the break, jurors heard for the second time an audio recording Cohen surreptitiously made of himself briefing Trump in September 2016 about a plan to buy the rights to McDougal’s story from the National Enquirer.
This time, they had Cohen on the witness stand narrating and annotating the recording as it was being played.
After playing the nearly three-minute recording all the way through, Assistant District Attorney Susan Hoffinger stopped the tape at certain intervals for Cohen to describe what was happening and who he was talking about.
“I need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info regarding our friend, David,” Cohen is heard saying in the recording, which he said he made using the Voice Memos app on his iPhone.
Cohen testified that he wanted to set up a company for the transaction “in order to have separation” between Trump and the deal. He said “all of that info” included not just McDougal’s story, but anything else about Trump that might have been in American Media Inc.’s files.
As the recording continued, Cohen is heard telling Trump, “I’ve spoken to Allen Weisselberg about how to set the whole thing up.”
Trump replies, “So, what do we got to pay for this? One-fifty?”
Weisselberg was the Trump Organization’s longtime chief financial officer. “Every penny that came in or out went through Allen’s office,” Cohen testified.
Cohen is then heard talking about financing the deal, which on Monday he noted was an error and that what he really meant was funding. Trump is then heard talking about paying in cash, or “green” as Cohen described it on the witness stand — which he testified would have been another way to avoid a paper trail.
When the recording was first played in full, before he was asked for his insights, Cohen shook his head and pulled his glasses off as the September 2016 audio recording played and a transcript was shown on a monitor in front of him. He then took a swig of water and put his fingers to his lips as Trump’s recorded voice was heard booming in the courtroom.
