Judge Juan M. Merchan said the comments “raised the specter of fear for the safety of the jurors and of their loved ones.”
Former President Donald Trump speaks to media as he returns to his trial at the Manhattan Criminal Court, Friday, May 3, 2024, in New York.
Former Trump Organization controller Jeffrey McConney testified Monday about conversations he had with the company’s longtime finance chief Allen Weisselberg in January 2017 about reimbursing Cohen for $130,000 he’d paid to lawyer Keith Davidson, Daniels’ then-lawyer. Most of the checks were paid out of Trump’s personal account and were signed by him at the White House, Tarasoff testified.
Asked by prosecutor Christopher Conroy to describe Allen Weisselberg’s management style, she replied, “He had his hands in everything.”“I get approved bills, I enter them in the system, and I cut the checks,” she said matter-of-factly.The prosecution on Monday will call to the stand Deborah Tarasoff, the accounts payable supervisor at the Trump Organization.
Tarasoff said that in September 2016, as the presidential vote that catapulted Trump to the presidency neared, Weisselberg ordered her to start deleting notations about some of the transactions in the company’s bookkeeping system. Tarasoff said she didn’t think Weisselberg was asking her to do anything illegal.MCCONNEY ENDS TESTIMONY, COURT BREAKS FOR LUNCH
As for Cohen, McConney said his interactions with Trump’s then-lawyer were “minimal.” He said that other than emails about invoices, he never spoke to Cohen about the reimbursement arrangement. “It doesn’t say ‘fixer’ does it?” Bove asked, referencing a title commonly applied to Cohen. “No,” McConney responded.
The former Trump Organization executive, described by a witness Monday as the architect of an arrangement to reimburse Cohen for a hush-money payment, is currently in jail for lying under oath in another Trump-related case. Cohen told Congress in 2019 that it was Weisselberg who decided how to structure his reimbursement for the payment to Daniels. Cohen said Weisselberg paid the money out over 12 months “so that it would look like a retainer.”After paying the first two reimbursement checks to Michael Cohen through a trust, the remainder of the checks — covering payments for April to December 2017 — were paid from Donald Trump’s personal account, Jeffrey McConney testified on Monday.
McConney served as the Trump Organization’s controller for nearly three decades before retiring last year.Getting to a key part of Donald Trump’s hush money case — how and why Michael Cohen’s reimbursement for the Stormy Daniels payment was entered as a legal expense — former Trump Organization controller Jeffrey McConney testified that he instructed an accounting department employee to do so.
Weisselberg’s handwritten notes about reimbursing Cohen were stapled to the bank statement in the company’s files, Jeffrey McConney, formerly the Trump Organization’s controller, testified. “Allen Weisselberg said we had to get some money to Michael, we had to reimburse Michael. He tossed a pad toward me and I started taking notes on what he said,” McConney testified. “That’s how I found out about it.”
McConney was taken aback. Then Trump added, according to the ex-controller: “You’re not fired, but my cash balances went down from last week.” “That’s him!” one of the high schoolers yelped earlier in the morning as Trump appeared on the video monitor. She was promptly shushed by one of her classmates.Former Trump Organization controller Jeffrey McConney took the stand Monday morning in Donald Trump’s hush money case.
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