Donald Trump worried revelations of an extramarital encounter with a porn actor would be a “disaster” for his first White House bid, former fixer Michael Cohen testified, bolstering Manhattan prosecutors’ claims that “hush money” payments were used to influence the 2016 election.
Cohen, 57, used $130,000 of his own money to buy the silence of Stormy Daniels in the run-up to the election, after the adult entertainer threatened to go public with claims that she had sex with Trump. The recording of the reimbursements for those payments are at the heart of criminal charges against the former president in New York.
A Trump loyalist who has become one of the presumptive Republican nominee’s most bitter opponents, Cohen is a crucial witness in the trial against his former mentor and employer, having admitted to orchestrating a “catch and kill” scheme to bury a series of negative stories.