Jurors selected for the hush-money trial of Donald Trump heard a recording on Thursday of Trump's discussions to buy the silence of a Playboy model who claimed to have had an affair with him, the Associated Press reports. A visibly irritated Trump leaned forward at the defense table, and jurors appeared riveted as prosecutors played the September 2016 recording that Trump's former attorney and fixer, Michael Cohen, secretly made of himself briefing his celebrity client on a plan to buy Karen McDougal’s story of an extramarital relationship.
Though the recording was discovered years ago, it is possibly the most vivid evidence presented to the jury to link Trump to the payments made to keep quiet about the situation at the center of his criminal trial in Manhattan. It followed hours of testimony from attorney Keith Davidson, who worked with Cohen to negotiate the deal for McDougal’s silence and admitted to being stunned that his hidden-hand efforts might have contributed to Trump’s White House victory.
The testimony from Davidson was intended to link the hush money payments directly to Trump’s presidential ambitions and to reinforce prosecutors’ argument that the case is about interference in the 2016 election, rather than just sex and money. The prosecution's case relies heavily on Davidson's testimony that Trump and his allies conspired to suppress negative stories in the 2016 presidential election. He represented both McDougal and porn actor Stormy Daniels in negotiations that resulted in the purchase of rights to their claims of sexual encounters with Trump and those stories getting removed, a tabloid industry practice known as “catch-and-kill.”
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