Washington:

President Donald Trump has appealed his conviction for covering up hush money payments to a porn star and appointed new lawyers to expunge the first conviction of a former president, his legal team said Wednesday.

Trump named lawyers from the prestigious firm Sullivan and Cromwell in an effort to overturn the New York jury’s guilty verdict and the sentence passed by the judge in the case on January 10.

“President Donald J. Trump’s appeal is important for the rule of law, New York’s reputation as a global business, financial and legal center, as well as for the presidency and all public officials,” Trump’s new lawyer Robert Giuffra said in a statement.

“The misuse of the criminal law by the Manhattan (prosecutor) to target President Trump sets a dangerous precedent, and we look forward to the case being dismissed on appeal.”

New York judge Juan Merchan handed down no jail time or fine, but the discharge upheld the jury’s guilty verdict — and confirmed Trump’s infamy as the first former president convicted of a felony.

The 34 counts of falsifying business records on which Trump was convicted in May 2024 carried potential jail time.

The trial saw Trump forced to look on as a string of witnesses testified that he had fraudulently covered up illicit payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels in an effort to stop her disclosing their tryst ahead of the 2016 presidential election, which he ultimately won.

Trump had sought a suspension of the criminal proceedings after a New York State appeals court dismissed his effort to have the hearing delayed.

But the Supreme Court ruled that the sentencing could proceed.

In a brief legal filing dated Tuesday, Trump’s lawyers state that he “hereby appeals to the First Department of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York from the judgment of conviction… and sentence rendered.”

No grounds for the appeal were given.

Trump repeatedly called the prosecution a “witch hunt”, rhetoric prosecutors argued was “designed to have a chilling effect” on the legal cases against him.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Washington:

The US Supreme Court on Thursday denied a last-minute bid by President-elect Donald Trump to halt sentencing in his hush money case.

The top court rejected Trump’s emergency application seeking to block Friday’s sentencing by a 5-4 vote.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Washington:

A New York appeals court judge on Tuesday rejected US President-elect Donald Trump’s request to delay this week’s sentencing in his hush money case.

Trump is scheduled to be sentenced on Friday after being convicted by a New York jury in May of 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels.

Associate Justice Ellen Gesmer rejected arguments by Trump’s attorneys that the sentencing should be postponed while the president-elect appeals his conviction.

Trump’s lawyers also claimed that the immunity from prosecution granted to a president should be extended to a president-elect but Gesmer brushed those arguments aside, too.

“After consideration of the papers submitted and the extensive oral argument, movant’s application for an interim stay is denied,” she said.

Trump, who is to be sworn in as president on January 20, can appeal Gesmer’s ruling to the full appellate court bench and potentially up to the Supreme Court.

Judge Juan Merchan, who presided over the hush money case, has given Trump, the first former US president ever convicted of a crime, the option of appearing either in person or virtually at Friday’s sentencing.

Merchan has also said he was not inclined to impose jail time on the former and future president.

Trump lashed out at Merchan during a press conference on Tuesday, calling him a “crooked judge” and complaining about a gag order issued in the case.

Trump was convicted of falsifying business records to cover up a payment made to Daniels on the eve of the 2016 election to stop her from revealing an alleged 2006 sexual encounter.

Trump was certified as the winner of the 2024 presidential election on Monday, four years after his supporters rioted at the US Capitol as he sought to overturn his 2020 defeat.

Trump’s attorneys had sought to have the case dismissed on multiple grounds, including the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling last year that former US presidents have sweeping immunity from prosecution for a range of official acts committed while in office.

In an 18-page decision last week, Merchan rejected the motions but noted that Trump will be immune from prosecution once he is sworn in as president.

He said he was leaning towards giving Trump an unconditional discharge — meaning the New York real estate tycoon would not only avoid the threat of jail, but would escape conditions of any kind.

The sentence would nevertheless see Trump entering the White House as a convicted felon.

The 78-year-old Trump potentially faced up to four years in prison but legal experts — even before he won the November presidential election — did not expect Merchan to incarcerate him.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

New York:

The New York judge presiding over President-elect Donald Trump’s hush money case on Friday set sentencing for 10 days before his January 20 inauguration and said he was not inclined to impose jail time.

Judge Juan Merchan said Trump, the first former president ever convicted of a crime, can appear either in person or virtually at his January 10 sentencing.

In an 18-page decision, Merchan rejected various motions from Trump’s lawyers seeking to have his conviction thrown out.

The judge said that instead of incarceration he was leaning towards an unconditional discharge –- a far more lenient sentence that would nevertheless have Trump entering the White House as a convicted felon.

“It seems proper at this juncture to make known the Court’s inclination to not impose any sentence of incarceration,” the judge said, noting that prosecutors also did not believe a jail term was a “practicable recommendation.”

Trump was convicted in New York in May of 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels on the eve of the 2016 election to stop her from revealing an alleged 2006 sexual encounter.

Trump’s attorneys had sought to have the case dismissed on various grounds, including the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling last year that former US presidents have sweeping immunity from prosecution for a range of official acts committed while in office.

Merchan rejected that argument but he noted that Trump will be immune from prosecution once he is sworn in as president.

“Finding no legal impediment to sentencing and recognizing that Presidential immunity will likely attach once Defendant takes his Oath of Office, it is incumbent upon this Court to set this matter down for imposition of sentence prior to January 20, 2025,” Merchan said.

Trump also faced two federal cases brought by special counsel Jack Smith but both were dropped under a long-standing Justice Department policy of not prosecuting a sitting president.

Trump was accused of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election he lost to Joe Biden and removing large quantities of top secret documents after leaving the White House, but the cases never came to trial.

Trump also faces racketeering charges in Georgia over his efforts to subvert the 2020 election results in the southern state, but that case will likely be frozen while he is in the White House.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Trump’s lawyers claimed in a letter to Manhattan Judge Juan M. Merchan that they had “evidence of grave juror misconduct during the trial.” File
| Photo Credit: AP

President-elect Donald Trump’s lawyers are raising a new claim in their fight to overturn his hush money conviction, alleging that the historic verdict was tainted by juror misconduct.

But prosecutors contend that the allegations in a defense court filing made public on Tuesday are “unsworn, unsupported” hearsay and part of a last-ditch effort to undermine public confidence in the case.

Trump’s lawyers claimed in a letter to Manhattan Judge Juan M. Merchan that they had “evidence of grave juror misconduct during the trial.”

Details of the allegations were redacted and hidden from public view.

The defense letter, dated Dec. 3, was added to the public court docket on Tuesday along with two responses from the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which prosecuted the hush money case, dated Dec. 5 and 9.

The development comes as Merchan is weighing a pending defense request to throw out the case in light of his impending return to the White House.

In their written responses, Manhattan prosecutors argued that Trump’s lawyers were trying to muddy the verdict by airing their claims in a letter to the judge rather than a formal motion to dismiss the case. Prosecutors also questioned the defense’s resistance to having Merchan hold a court hearing where their juror misconduct claims could be examined more thoroughly.

Trump’s lawyers, Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, argued in their letter that such a hearing would involve “extensive. time-consuming, and invasive fact finding” and would interfere with the president-elect’s transition into office. Prosecutors wrote that by opposing a hearing, the defense was trying to force Merchan “to accept their untested, unsworn allegations as true.”

Merchan said in a separate letter Monday that he ordered the reactions both to preserve the integrity of the case and to ensure the safety of jurors, whose names have been kept private. Three of the letter’s seven pages were entirely covered in black ink.

Blanche and Bove’s letter “consists entirely of unsworn allegations,” Merchan wrote.

Allowing them to be filed publicly without redactions “would only serve to undermine the integrity of these proceedings while simultaneously placing the safety of the jurors at grave risk,” he wrote.

“Allegations of juror misconduct should be thoroughly investigated,” Merchan wrote. “However, this Court is prohibited from deciding such claims on the basis of mere hearsay and conjecture.”

Trump has been fighting for months to reverse his May 30 conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal a $130,000 hush money payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels to suppress her claim that they had sex a decade earlier, which he denies. The payment was made shortly before the 2016 election.

On Monday, Merchan rejected Trump’s request to throw out the case on presidential immunity grounds, finding that the U.S. Supreme Court’s July 1 ruling granting former president’s broad protection from prosecution did not require upending the case.

Trump’s immunity claim was just one of several efforts he and his lawyers have made to get his conviction overturned and the case dismissed.

After Trump won last month’s election, Merchan indefinitely postponed his late November sentencing so both sides could suggest next steps. Trump’s lawyers argued that anything other than immediate dismissal would undermine the transfer of power and cause unconstitutional “disruptions” to the presidency.

Prosecutors, seeking to preserve the verdict, proposed several alternatives.

They included: freezing the case until Trump leaves office in 2029; agreeing that any future sentence won’t include jail time; or treating the case the way some courts do when a defendant dies.

In the last scenario, borrowed from what some states do in such an occurrence, the case would be closed by noting that Trump was convicted but that he wasn’t sentenced and his appeal wasn’t resolved because he took office. Trump’s lawyers branded the concept “absurd.” They also objected to the other suggestions.

Trump, a Republican, takes office Jan. 20. He’s the first former president to be convicted of a felony and the first convicted criminal to be elected to the office.

New York:

Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump on Friday welcomed a delay in his New York hush money fraud case that pushed sentencing on his 34 felony convictions until after the election.

“The Manhattan D.A. Witch Hunt has been postponed because everyone realizes that there was NO CASE, I DID NOTHING WRONG!… This case should be rightfully terminated, as we prepare for the Most Important Election in the History of our Country,” he posted on his Truth Social platform.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

New York:

A judge eased a gag order on Tuesday that was imposed on Donald Trump during his criminal trial which saw him convicted of 34 counts, according to a court filing.

Judge Juan Merchan imposed the limited gag order ahead of the trial, restricting Trump from commenting publicly on jurors, witnesses, prosecutors and court staff, later expanding it to include his own family and that of the prosecutor.

Merchan, who will sentence the presidential hopeful on July 11, said that “circumstances have now changed. The trial portion of these proceedings ended when the verdict was rendered, and the jury discharged.”

The order means Trump, the first ever former US president to be convicted of a felony, can now comment publicly about witnesses who testified at his trial, as well as discuss the jury and their verdict.

But Merchan said that measures barring the disclosure of jurors’ identities would remain in place.

Trump was fined $10,000 by the Manhattan court for breaking the order on 10 occasions — and threatened with jail for openly flouting the judge’s ruling.

Before the gag order was imposed ahead of Trump’s trial, the ex-president repeatedly attacked likely witnesses and the prosecutors via posts on his Truth Social platform.

On May 30 jurors found Trump, who is seeking to retake the presidency in this year’s election, guilty of falsifying business records to cover up a sex scandal in the final stages of the 2016 presidential campaign.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Donald Trump’s defence team attacked the hush money case against him on Tuesday by calling the star witness a liar, seeking to discredit weeks of testimony that prosecutors say prove the former president interfered in the 2016 election through a scheme to suppress stories seen as harmful to his campaign.

The closing arguments, which were expected to last the entire day, gave attorneys one last chance to address the Manhattan jury and to score final points with the panel before it starts deliberating the fate of the first former American President charged with felony crimes.

“President Trump is innocent. He did not commit any crimes, and the district attorney has not met their burden of proof, period,” said defence attorney Todd Blanche, who said the evidence in the case should “leave you wanting.” In an hourslong address to the jury, Mr. Blanche attacked the foundation of the case, which charges Mr. Trump with conspiring to conceal hush money payments prosecutors say were made on his behalf during the 2016 presidential campaign to stifle a porn actor’s claim that she had a sexual encounter with Mr. Trump a decade earlier.

With sweeping denials mirroring his client’s “deny everything” approach, Mr. Blanche countered the prosecution’s portrayal of Trump as a detail-oriented manager who paid dutiful attention to the checks he signed; disputed the contention that Mr. Trump and the porn actor, Stormy Daniels, had sex; and rejected the idea that the alleged hush money scheme amounted to illegal interference in the election.

“Every campaign in this country is a conspiracy to promote a candidate, a group of people who are working together to help somebody win,” Mr. Blanche said.

After more than four weeks of testimony, the summations tee up a momentous and historically unprecedented task for the jury as it decides whether to convict the presumptive Republican presidential nominee in connection with the payments.

Because prosecutors have the burden of proof, they will deliver their arguments last.

Trump lawyer calls Michael Cohen a liar

Prosecutors will tell jurors that they have heard enough testimony to convict Mr. Trump of all charges while defense attorneys aimed to create doubts about the strength of the evidence by targeting the credibility of Michael Cohen. Mr. Trump’s former lawyer and personal fixer pleaded guilty to federal charges for his role in the hush money payments and served as the star prosecution witness in the trial.

“He’s literally like an MVP of liars. He lies constantly,” Mr. Blanche said of Cohen. “He lied to Congress. He lied to prosecutors. He lied to his family and business associates.” After closing arguments, the judge will instruct the jury on the law governing the case and the factors the panel can take into account during deliberations.

Mr. Trump faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, charges punishable by up to four years in prison. He has pleaded not guilty and denied any wrongdoing. It’s unclear whether prosecutors would seek imprisonment in the event of a conviction, or if the judge would impose that punishment if asked.

The case centres on a $130,000 payment Mr. Cohen made to Ms. Daniels in the final days of the 2016 election to prevent her from going public with her story of a sexual encounter she says she had with Mr. Trump 10 years earlier in a Lake Tahoe hotel suite.

Mr. Trump has denied Ms. Daniels’ account, and his attorney, during hours of questioning in the trial, accused her of making it up.

When Mr. Trump reimbursed Mr. Cohen, the payments were logged as being for legal services, which prosecutors say was designed to conceal the true purpose of the transaction with Ms. Daniels.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers contended throughout the trial that they were legitimate payments for actual legal services. Mr. Blanche, delivering a PowerPoint presentation to jurors, pointed to emails and testimony showing that Mr. Cohen did indeed work on some legal matters for Mr. Trump that year.

While Mr. Cohen characterised that work as “very minimal,” Mr. Blanche argued otherwise.

The attorney’s voice became even more impassioned as he revisited one of the more memorable moments of the trial: when Mr. Blanche sought to unravel Mr. Cohen’s claim that he had spoken to Mr. Trump by phone about Ms. Daniels arrangement on October 24, 2016.

Mr. Cohen said he had contacted Mr. Trump’s bodyguard as a way of getting a hold of Mr. Trump, but Mr. Blanche asserted that at the time Mr. Cohen was actually dealing with a spate of harassing phone calls and was preoccupied by that problem.

“It was a lie,” Mr. Blanche said. “That was a lie, and he got caught red-handed.” Mr. Blanche also sought to distance Mr. Trump from the mechanics of the reimbursements, saying checks to Mr. Cohen were signed as Mr. Trump was preoccupied with the presidency in 2017.

He pointed to the testimony of a former Trump Organisation controller, who told jurors that he never talked to Mr. Trump about how to characterise the payments sent to an accounts payable staffer. Mr. Blanche also noted that another Trump aide said Mr. Trump would sign checks while meeting with people or while on the phone, not knowing what they were.

The nearly two dozen witnesses included Ms. Daniels, who described in sometimes vivid detail the encounter she says she had with Mr. Trump; David Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer, who testified that he used his media enterprise to protect Mr. Trump by squelching stories that could harm his campaign; and Mr. Cohen, who testified that Mr. Trump was intimately involved in the hush money discussions. “Just pay it,” the now-disbarred lawyer quoted Mr. Trump as saying.

Prosecutors are expected to remind jurors of the bank statements, emails and other documentary evidence they have viewed, as well as an audio recording in which Mr. Cohen and Mr. Trump can be heard discussing paying $150,000 to former Playboy model Karen McDougal to keep her from going public with a claim that she had had a yearlong affair with Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump has denied a relationship with Ms. McDougal too.

Defence lawyers called two witnesses — neither of them Trump. They focused much of their energy on discrediting Mr. Cohen, pressing him on his own criminal history, his past lies and his recollection of key details.

On cross-examination, for instance, Mr. Cohen admitted stealing tens of thousands of dollars from Mr. Trump’s company by asking to be reimbursed for money he had not spent. Mr. Cohen acknowledged once telling a prosecutor he felt that Ms. Daniels and her lawyer were extorting Mr. Trump.

The New York prosecution is one of four criminal cases pending against Mr. Trump as he seeks to reclaim the White House from Democrat Joe Biden. It’s unclear if any of the others will reach trial before November’s election.

Closing arguments are expected on Tuesday in Donald Trump’s criminal hush money trial in New York, wrapping up what is likely to be the only case against the former U.S. president to reach a jury before the November election.

Here is a look at what comes next.

WHAT HAPPENS DURING CLOSING ARGUMENTS?

Prosecutors with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office will present their summations first and seek to convince a dozen New Yorkers that Trump falsified business records to cover up an alleged sexual encounter with porn star Stormy Daniels – a liaison Trump denies.

Prosecutors must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump intentionally made or directed others to make false entries in business records, did so with intent to commit another underlying crime and sought to conceal the commission of that crime. They must also prove the 34 records in question were falsified.

Trump’s lawyers face a lower burden and only need to sow sufficient doubt in jurors’ minds to secure an acquittal, or sway at least one holdout among the 12 to deadlock the jury and trigger a mistrial.

WHAT HAPPENS AFTER CLOSING ARGUMENTS?

The judge overseeing the case, Juan Merchan, will give the jury lengthy instructions on how to interpret the law and evidence during their deliberations.

Jurors will be told that they can only convict Trump if they believe he is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

During deliberations, jurors will have access to all of the evidence and be able to ask questions of the judge, who will confer with prosecutors and defense lawyers before deciding how to answer.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN JURORS REACH A VERDICT?

The verdict must be unanimous, and if the jury deadlocks, Merchan will declare a mistrial.

Once jurors inform the court they have reached a verdict, Merchan will summon the parties to the courtroom to hear it read by the foreperson. Merchan must still affirm the verdict and enter a final judgment. Either side can ask him to effectively overrule the jury.

WHAT HAPPENS IF TRUMP IS CONVICTED?

If Trump is convicted, it would likely be several weeks or months until he is sentenced. As a first-time offender of a nonviolent crime, he would likely be released on bond in the meantime.

It is rare for people with no criminal history who are convicted only of falsification of business records to be sentenced to prison in New York. Punishments like fines or probation are more common.

The maximum sentence for Trump’s crime of falsifying business records is 1-1/3 to four years in prison, but in cases involving prison time, defendants are typically sentenced to a year or less.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Former U.S. President Donald Trump was intimately involved with all aspects of a scheme to stifle stories about sex that threatened to torpedo his 2016 campaign, his former lawyer said Monday in matter-of-fact testimony that went to the heart of the former president’s hush money trial.

“Everything required Mr. Trump’s sign-off,” said Michael Cohen, Mr. Trump’s fixer-turned-foe and the prosecution’s star witness in a case now entering its final, pivotal stretch.

In hours of highly anticipated testimony, Mr. Cohen placed Mr. Trump at the centre of the hush money plot, saying the then-candidate had promised to reimburse the lawyer for the money he fronted and was constantly updated about behind-the-scenes efforts to bury stories feared to be harmful to the campaign.

ALSO READ | A respite: On the Trump case 

“We need to stop this from getting out,” Mr. Cohen quoted Mr. Trump as telling him in reference to porn actor Stormy Daniels’ account of a sexual encounter with Mr. Trump a decade earlier. The then-candidate was especially anxious about how the story would affect his standing with female voters.

A similar episode occurred when Mr. Cohen alerted Mr. Trump that a Playboy model was alleging that she and Mr. Trump had an extramarital affair. “Make sure it doesn’t get released,” was Mr. Cohen’s message to Mr. Trump, the lawyer said. The woman, Karen McDougal, was paid $150,000 in an arrangement that was made after Mr. Trump received a “complete and total update on everything that transpired.”

“What I was doing, I was doing at the direction of and benefit of Mr. Trump,” Mr. Cohen testified.

Mr. Trump has pleaded not guilty and denied having sexual encounters with the two women.

Mr. Cohen is by far the prosecution’s most important witness, and though his testimony lacked the electricity that defined Ms. Daniels’ turn on the stand last week, he nonetheless linked Mr. Trump directly to the payments and helped illuminate some of the drier evidence such as text messages and phone logs that jurors had previously seen.

The testimony of a witness with such intimate knowledge of Mr. Trump’s activities could heighten the legal exposure of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee if jurors deem him sufficiently credible. But prosecutors’ reliance on a witness with such a checkered past — Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the payments — also carries sizable risks with a jury and could be a boon to Mr. Trump politically as he fundraises off his legal woes and paints the case as the product of a tainted criminal justice system.

The men, once so close that Mr. Cohen boasted that he would “take a bullet” for Mr. Trump, had no visible interaction inside the courtroom. The sedate atmosphere was a marked contrast from their last courtroom faceoff, when Mr. Trump walked out of the courtroom in October after his lawyer finished questioning Mr. Cohen during his civil fraud trial.

This time around, Mr. Trump sat at the defence table with his eyes closed for long stretches of testimony as Mr. Cohen recounted his decade-long career as a senior Trump Organization executive, doing work that by his own admission sometimes involved lying and bullying others on his boss’s behalf.

Jurors had previously heard from others about the tabloid industry practice of “catch-and-kill,” in which rights to a story are purchased so that it can then be quashed. But Mr. Cohen’s testimony, which continues Tuesday, is crucial to prosecutors because of his direct communication with the then-candidate about embarrassing stories he was scrambling to suppress.

Mr. Cohen also matters because the reimbursements he received from a $130,000 hush money payment to Ms. Daniels, which prosecutors say was meant to buy her silence in advance of the election, form the basis of 34 felony counts charging Trump with falsifying business records. Prosecutors say the reimbursements were logged, falsely, as legal expenses to conceal the payments’ true purpose. Defence lawyers say the payments to Mr. Cohen were properly categorised as legal expenses.

Under questioning from a prosecutor, Mr. Cohen detailed the steps he took to mask the payments. When he opened a bank account to pay Ms. Daniels, an action he said he told Mr. Trump he was taking, he told the bank it was for a new limited liability corporation but withheld the actual purpose.

“I’m not sure they would’ve opened it,” he said, if they knew it was ”to pay off an adult film star for a nondisclosure agreement.”

To establish Mr. Trump’s familiarity with the payments,Mr. Cohen told the jury that Mr. Trump had promised to reimburse him. The two men even discussed with Allen Weisselberg, a former Trump Organization chief financial officer, how the reimbursements would be paid as legal services over monthly instalments, Mr. Cohen testified.

And though Mr. Trump’s lawyers have said he acted to protect his family from salacious stories, Mr. Cohen described Mr. Trump as preoccupied instead by the impact they would have on the campaign.

He said Mr. Trump even sought to delay finalising the Ms. Daniels transaction until after Election Day so he wouldn’t have to pay her.

“Because,” Mr. Cohen testified, “after the election it wouldn’t matter” to Mr. Trump.

Mr. Cohen also gave jurors an insider account of his negotiations with David Pecker, the then-publisher of the National Enquirer, who was such a close Mr. Trump ally that Mr. Pecker told Mr. Cohen his publication maintained a “file drawer or a locked drawer” where files related to Mr. Trump were kept.

That effort took on added urgency following the October 2016 disclosure of an “Access Hollywood” recording in which Mr. Trump was heard boasting about grabbing women sexually.

The Daniels payment was finalised several weeks after that revelation, but Monday’s testimony also centred on a deal earlier that fall with Ms. McDougal.

Mr. Cohen testified that he went to Mr. Trump immediately after the National Enquirer alerted him to a story about the alleged Ms. McDougal affair. “Make sure it doesn’t get released,” he said Mr. Trump told him.

Mr. Trump checked in with Mr. Pecker about the matter, asking him how “things were going” with it, Mr. Cohen said. Mr. Pecker responded, ‘We have this under control, and we’ll take care of this,” Mr. Cohen testified.

Mr. Cohen also said he was with Mr. Trump as he spoke to Mr. Pecker on a speakerphone in his Trump Tower office.

“David had stated that it’s going to cost them $150,000 to control the story,” Mr. Cohen said. He quoted Mr. Trump as saying: “No problem, I will take care of it,” which Mr. Cohen interpreted to mean that the payment would be reimbursed.

To lay the foundation that the deals were done with Mr. Trump’s endorsement, prosecutors elicited testimony from Mr. Cohen designed to show Trump as a hands-on manager. Acting on Trump’s behalf, Cohen said, he sometimes lied and bullied others, including reporters.

“When he would task you with something, he would then say, ‘Keep me informed. Let me know what’s going on,’” Mr. Cohen testified. He said that was especially true “if there was a matter that was troubling to him.”

Defence lawyers have teed up a bruising cross-examination of Mr. Cohen, telling jurors during opening statements that he’s an “admitted liar” with an “obsession to get President Trump.”

Prosecutors aim to blunt those attacks by acknowledging Mr. Cohen’s past crimes to jurors and by relying on other witnesses whose accounts, they hope, will buttress Mr. Cohen’s testimony. They include a lawyer who negotiated the hush money payments on behalf of Ms. Daniels and Ms. McDougal, as well as Mr. Pecker and Ms. Daniels.

After Mr. Cohen’s home and office were raided by the FBI in 2018, Mr. Trump showered him with affection on social media and predicted that Mr. Cohen would not “flip.” Months later, Mr. Cohen did exactly that, pleading guilty to federal campaign-finance charges.

Besides pleading guilty to the hush money payments, Mr. Cohen later admitted lying to Congress about a Moscow real estate project that he had pursued on Mr. Trump’s behalf during the heat of the 2016 campaign. He was sentenced to three years in prison, but spent much of it in home confinement.