Michael Cohen, former lawyer for former US President Donald Trump, testified this Monday in the open bribery case against the magnate for the alleged bribery of porn actress ‘Stormy Daniels’ and testified that the political leader commissioned him to silence ‘Daniels’ with payments until after the elections of November 8, 2016, in which Trump himself was the winner.
Cohen explained to Judge Juan Merchan that Trump’s team was concerned about the candidate’s relationships with women and more specifically the efforts that were made to buy ‘Daniels’ silence.
It all started when Cohen learned from sources at the tabloid magazine ‘National Enquirer’ that ‘Daniels’ was proposing to sell a story about an affair with Trump that occurred in 2006 whose publication would be “catastrophic” for the campaign.
Trump “told me, ‘This is a disaster, an absolute disaster. Women are going to hate me. It’s a real disaster. Women are going to hate me. Guys are going to think it’s cool, but this is going to be a disaster for the campaign.’ “Cohen explained.
Therefore, he tasked her with preventing the story from being published. “I want you to postpone it as long as you can, until after the elections, because if I win it will not be relevant because I will be the president and if I lose, it will not matter to me,” Cohen said. “I didn’t even think about Melania (his wife). It was all for the campaign,” he added.
Finally, on October 10, 2016, the director of the ‘National Enquirer’, Dylan Howard, sent Cohen a message with the contact of Keith Davidson, Daniels’ lawyer, for a “business opportunity.” The next day they agreed to pay 130,000 dollars (about 120,000 euros) in exchange for the rights to the story.
Cohen asked for ten days to raise this amount, but his intention was to postpone it successively until after the November 8 elections following Trump’s instructions.
The Prosecutor’s Office accuses Trump of 34 crimes for alleged document falsification, within a plot with which he would have tried to hide the payment of those $130,000 to ‘Stormy Daniels’ to buy his silence.
