Key takeaways from day 12 of Trump's secret trial in New York | Donald Trump News

A New York jury heard more testimony in the criminal trial against former US President Donald Trump, who is accused of falsifying business records linked to secret payments before the 2016 election.

But before the jury even sat on Monday, Judge Juan Merchan fined Trump an additional $1,000 and found him in contempt of court for the 10th time for violating a silence order in the case.

I do not want to impose a prison sentence and I have done everything possible to avoid that. But I will do it if necessary, Merchan said from the bench.

Jailing would be an unprecedented step in the historic trial, which stems from secret payments that former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen made to adult film star Stormy Daniels.

Prosecutors argued that Trump himself directed the payments, in an effort to silence Daniels, who claimed to have had an extramarital affair.

Trump, who faces 34 counts in the case, is accused of engaging in a conspiracy to undermine the integrity of the 2016 presidential election by suppressing information that would not have been been flattering to his campaign.

After Merchan's ruling, jurors saw bank records and heard testimony from two members of the Trump Organization, one from a former employee, the other from a current one who spoke about invoices and logs linked to the alleged payments secrets.

Trump, who is the Republican Party's presumptive nominee heading into November's presidential election, has pleaded not guilty and accused prosecutors of seeking to derail his re-election bid. He also denied any sexual relationship with Daniels.

Here are five key takeaways from the 12th day of the trial.

Bank statements displayed

For the first time, jurors heard Monday about the reimbursements that sparked the charges against Trump.

Former Trump Organization controller Jeffrey McConney testified about conversations he had with the company's longtime CFO, Allen Weisselberg, in January 2017 about reimbursing Cohen.

Allen Weisselberg said we had to get Michael money, we had to pay Michael back. He threw me a notepad and I started taking notes on what he said, McConney testified. That's how I discovered it.

Cohen, who had worked for the Trump Organization for about a decade, had just been removed from the payroll as a salaried employee. However, he had paid $130,000 to attorney Keith Davidson, who represented adult film star Daniels, in an effort to buy her silence.

A bank statement displayed in court showed Cohen paying $130,000 to Davidson on October 27, 2016, into an account of a shell company set up by Cohen for this purpose.

Weisselberg's handwritten notes regarding Cohen's reimbursement were stapled to the bank statement in the company's files, McConney said.

The notes outline a plan to pay Cohen a base reimbursement of $180,000 covering the payment to Davidson and an unrelated technology bill. This total was then doubled or increased to cover the state, municipal and federal taxes Weisselberg estimated Cohen would pay on the payments.

Weisselberg then added a $60,000 bonus, for a total of $420,000, according to the notes.

The reimbursement payments were listed as legal fees, which prosecutors say underscores their claim that Trump falsified business records.

Payments made from Trump account, McConney says

After paying the first two reimbursement checks to Cohen through a trust, the remainder of the checks covering payments from April to December 2017 were paid from Trump's personal account, McConney also testified.

With Trump, the sole signatory of this account, in the White House, changing the funding source required a whole new process for us, McConney said.

McConney's own notes were also presented to the court. After calculations that Cohen would receive $35,000 per month for 12 months, McConney wrote: transfer monthly from DJT.

When asked what that meant, McConney replied, “It came from the president's personal bank account.”

McConney's testimony also addressed a key element of the case: how and why Cohen's reimbursement for Daniels' payment was counted as a legal expense. He testified that he asked an employee of the accounting department to do so.

All expenses had to be entered into the general ledger with a category code, and McConney asked the accounting team to enter the code for legal fees: 51505.

We were paying a lawyer, McConney said of Cohen on Monday.

Trump awaits the start of his criminal trial in Manhattan Criminal Court on May 6 in New York, United States. [Peter Foley/Pool via AP Photo]

Under cross-examination later that day, McConney acknowledged that Trump never asked him to record Cohen's payments as legal fees, nor did Weisselberg say Trump had wanted them are listed in this way.

Trump's lawyer, Emil Bove, also pointed out that Cohen was a lawyer and that payments to lawyers constituted legal fees.

Trump's team argued that there was nothing illegal about the way Cohen was paid.

Another Trump Organization employee testifies

The prosecution also called Deborah Tarasoff, an accounts payable manager at the Trump Organization, to the stand Monday afternoon.

Tarasoff was the recipient of a 2017 email in which McConney told her to count reimbursements to Cohen as legal fees. She prepared the checks to pay Trump's former lawyer.

Tarasoff testified about the process by which the checks used to reimburse Cohen were issued.

Most of the checks were paid from Trump's personal account and were signed by him at the White House, she said. She added that the checks would then come back with Trump's Sharpie signature.

I would separate them, mail the check and file the backup, she said, which means putting the bill in the Trump Organizations filing system.

Two other checks presented in court were from Trump's revocable trust, which was used to hold his assets while he was president.

It bore the signatures of two directors: Trump's son, Donald Trump Jr., and Weisselberg, the longtime financial chief of the Trump Organization.

The checks were recorded in internal files as legal fees arising from a representation mandate. Prosecutors say the payments were mislabeled to conceal Cohen's reimbursement and the underlying secret payment.

Judge fines Trump again

Trump's $1,000 fine Monday was the tenth such penalty for violating a court-imposed gag order, which prohibits the ex-president from making comments about jurors, witnesses and families of court employees who might interfere with the case.

But in imposing the fine, Judge Merchan noted that the previous nine fines of $1,000 each did not appear to prevent Trump from violating the gag order.

It appears that the $1,000 fines are not a deterrent. Therefore, going forward, this court must consider a prison sanction, Merchan told Trump and his defense team.

The judge also emphasized that prison time was truly the last resort, as it could disrupt the trial and have implications for Trump's 2024 presidential campaign.

But Merchan added that Trump's persistent and deliberate violations of the silence order amounted to a direct attack on the rule of law.

The latest violation stems from an April 22 interview Trump gave to a right-wing television network, in which he criticized the composition of the jury. This jury was chosen so quickly 95% by Democrats. Those areas are mostly Democratic, Trump said.

Speaking to reporters outside the courtroom on Monday, Trump continued to strike a defiant tone.

This is a ridiculous case, I did nothing wrong, absolutely nothing wrong, Trump said, accusing the judge of depriving him of his constitutional rights with the gag order. He took away my constitutional right to speak.

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