Live coverage: Trump trial resumes with former adviser Hope Hicks taking the stand
On Thursday, during Donald Trump’s trial for 34 counts of falsifying business records, much of the day’s testimony day was taken up with Trump defense attorney Emil Bove’s cross-examination of entertainment lawyer Keith Davidson.
Bove drew out names of others involved with Davidson’s clients, from Lindsay Lohan to Hulk Hogan, to make it seem that the entertainment lawyer had been running a hub for scams in which his clients set out to entrap celebrities. Unsurprisingly, the back-and-forth between Davidson and Bove became contentious.
Then, during redirect, prosecutor Joshua Steinglass played an audio recording of a conversation between Davidson and former Trump attorney Michael Cohen. That conversation made it seem that Trump was a party to the negotiations over how to handle Stormy Daniels.
That was confirmed when the next witness, forensic analyst Douglas Daus, testified about how he was able to pull information from two of Cohen’s phones. Following this testimony, the jury heard a conversation between Trump and Cohen in which Trump talked about the amount Daniels would be paid and expressed a desire to get the matter resolved quickly.
That tape was extremely damaging to any idea that Trump was unaware or uninvolved in handling Daniel’s claims. Which is why Bove spent the end of the day on Thursday trying to plant doubt about law enforcement’s handling of Cohen’s phones and the authenticity of the recording. That cross-examination resumed Friday morning with Daus on the stand.
Just before noon on Friday, former Trump adviser Hope Hicks, who served as his press secretary during the 2016 campaign and then as White House communications director, was called to the stand.
“Several members of the public in the overflow room gasped when her name was announced,” Kate Christobek of The New York Times reported.
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