He was the person behind the hush cash, the amiable Beverly Hills lawyer who specialised in movie star grime — unearthing it, after which, for the correct value, burying it ceaselessly.
However in 2016, the lawyer, Keith Davidson, was on the verge of one thing grander than a run-of-the-mill intercourse tape or affair. He had two purchasers purchasing tales so large they could sway a presidential election: Their names have been Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, and so they have been prepared to inform the world about their sexual encounters with Donald J. Trump.
Within the days forward, the Manhattan district lawyer’s workplace will query Mr. Davidson at Mr. Trump’s felony trial in Manhattan, asking him to take jurors behind the scenes to see how Mr. Trump’s allies purchased his purchasers’ silence. Mr. Davidson, who started testifying earlier within the week, is anticipated to face questioning concerning the hush-money fee to Ms. Daniels, in addition to its aftermath, when for a time she denied having an affair with Mr. Trump.
On Thursday, after the common midweek break within the trial, prosecutors are anticipated to wrap up their questioning of Mr. Davidson, after which Mr. Trump’s legal professionals can have the prospect to cross-examine him.
Already, his hours of testimony opened a uncommon window on the seamy world of movie star hush cash and corroborated key info underpinning the prosecution’s case in opposition to Mr. Trump, the primary American president to face a felony trial.
In a vital back-and-forth with prosecutors this week, Mr. Davidson started to tie Mr. Trump to the $130,000 hush-money fee to Ms. Daniels, the porn star whose payoff is on the coronary heart of the case. Though Mr. Trump didn’t pay Ms. Daniels immediately — his fixer, Michael D. Cohen did — Mr. Davidson portrayed Mr. Trump because the hidden hand shaping the machinations.
“Michael Cohen didn’t have the authority to truly spend cash,” Mr. Davidson advised the jury, including, “My understanding was that Mr. Trump was the beneficiary of this contract.”
The testimony punctuated a high-stakes day on Tuesday that started with the decide holding Mr. Trump in contempt, fining the previous president $9,000 for repeatedly violating a gag order and warning that he might go to to jail if he continued to assault witnesses and jurors.
“The court docket won’t tolerate continued willful violations of its lawful orders,” the decide, Juan M. Merchan, stated in an ominous warning to open the third week of Mr. Trump’s trial. He added that though he was “keenly conscious of, and protecting of, defendant’s First Modification rights,” he would jail Mr. Trump “if vital and acceptable.”
The decide’s crackdown injected on the spot pressure into the day’s proceedings earlier than three new witnesses took the stand.
Probably the most important was Mr. Davidson, who started by recounting his illustration of Ms. McDougal, a Playboy mannequin who stated she’d had an affair with Mr. Trump in 2006.
In a placing stretch of testimony, Mr. Davidson learn aloud for the jury a sequence of off-color textual content exchanges from 2016, telling a Nationwide Enquirer editor that he had a “blockbuster Trump story” about Mr. Trump dishonest on his spouse, Melania Trump, with Ms. McDougal. When a few of Ms. McDougal’s feminine pals urged her to go to ABC Information as a substitute, Mr. Davidson warned that the story may slip away if The Nationwide Enquirer didn’t pay, and quick.
“Time is of the essence,” Mr. Davidson wrote. “The woman is being cornered by the estrogen mafia,” a message that Mr. Davidson, mortified by his years-old remarks, known as “a really unlucky, regrettable textual content” throughout his testimony.
That testimony provided one other exceptional second in a trial whose early days have been filled with them: a former president, the present Republican nominee, watching helplessly as two strangers uncovered particulars of a intercourse scandal that he had fought to maintain secret.
It additionally underscored the array of proof on the prosecution’s disposal because it assembled its case. On Tuesday alone, prosecutors launched reside testimony from Mr. Davidson and three different witnesses, a string of provocative textual content messages, movies of Trump marketing campaign occasions and excerpts from a deposition the previous president gave in a separate case — all woven right into a story that they are saying paints Mr. Trump as a felony.
As Mr. Davidson acquired deeper into particulars, his testimony additionally bolstered a key part of the prosecution’s rivalry that The Enquirer was concerned in a secret plot to spice up Mr. Trump’s candidacy.
The publication purchased Ms. McDougal’s silence for $150,000, however balked at laying out an enormous sum for Ms. Daniels. So the tabloid as a substitute notified Mr. Cohen that Ms. Daniels was purchasing her story, setting in movement the $130,000 hush-money deal.
Mr. Davidson supplied jurors with an in depth account of negotiations in Ms. Daniels’s case. Though her story of a tryst with Mr. Trump had been floating round for years, he famous that curiosity in it spiked after the emergence of the “Entry Hollywood” tape, on which Mr. Trump bragged about groping ladies.
The tape despatched Mr. Trump’s marketing campaign right into a tailspin, but when Ms. Daniels’s story acquired out, Mr. Davidson stated, it might have gotten rather a lot worse.
When Mr. Cohen was sluggish to pay, Mr. Davidson recalled phoning him to say “it is a very unhealthy scenario,” warning that Ms. Daniels and her agent have been getting ready to go public. Mr. Cohen grew to become agitated, noting that “my man” — Mr. Trump — was campaigning in a number of states that day, and “I’m doing every part I can.”
Finally, Mr. Cohen made the fee himself, and Mr. Trump reimbursed him. Prosecutors have charged the previous president, who faces as much as 4 years in jail, with falsifying enterprise information to cowl up that compensation.
Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen had a falling-out years in the past, and their mutual hatred has turn out to be a serious motif of the trial.
Mr. Trump is seemingly not the one one within the courtroom to have sturdy emotions about Mr. Cohen, who will probably be a star prosecution witness within the weeks forward. Three completely different witnesses provided unflattering descriptions of the previous fixer; Mr. Davidson known as him a “jerk” and recalled that when he talked to Mr. Cohen, he was met with a barrage of “insults,” “insinuations” and “allegations.”
Whereas it may appear unusual for prosecutors to elicit such unflattering characterizations of a key witness, they could find yourself working within the prosecution’s favor, desensitizing jurors to Mr. Cohen’s tough edges and making him a memorable and entertaining character of their eyes. It could be working: A number of jurors flashed smiles as Mr. Davidson used an expletive to explain him.
The Trump-Cohen feud additionally surfaced Tuesday in Justice Merchan’s choice to carry Mr. Trump in contempt, figuring out that the previous president had flouted the gag order by making 9 statements on social media and on his marketing campaign web site by which he attacked the jury and sure witnesses, together with Mr. Cohen. The decide ordered Mr. Trump to take away the posts by Tuesday afternoon, and he did.
Mr. Trump, who was accompanied in court docket by a larger-than-usual entourage, together with his son Eric Trump; a marketing campaign adviser, Susie Wiles; and Ken Paxton, the Texas lawyer basic, didn’t instantly react to the decide’s ruling. Throughout a break quickly after, he stood and glowered on the room.
The ruling marked a nadir in relations between the court docket and Mr. Trump. The previous president has attended every single day of the trial, although he has largely been relegated to the sidelines, complaining to cameras afterward concerning the gag order and the decide. Now, with the monetary penalty — and the specter of jail time — his fury might attain a boiling level.
Already, prosecutors have alerted the decide to 4 new potential violations. These weren’t lined by Justice Merchan’s Tuesday order and will probably be mentioned at one other listening to on Thursday morning.
The decide’s choice and his questioning on the listening to final week took purpose at two of Mr. Trump’s typical techniques: his tendency to lie and his behavior of suggesting that each motion he takes is political, even when it issues his felony instances.
Justice Merchan for probably the most half rejected Mr. Trump’s argument that his posts didn’t violate the gag order as a result of they have been responses to political assaults by adversaries who, by coincidence, occur to be potential witnesses.
Mr. Cohen has slammed Mr. Trump on social media, although final week he vowed to “stop posting something about Donald,” a choice he stated he had made “out of respect for Decide Merchan and the prosecutors.”
If Mr. Cohen breaks his silence, he might not be protected against Mr. Trump’s assaults: The decide, in his Tuesday order, urged that if witnesses provoked Mr. Trump, the previous president could be free to reply.
The gag order, Justice Merchan wrote, can’t “be used as a sword as a substitute of a defend by potential witnesses.”
Apart from Mr. Cohen, the opposite potential witness whom Mr. Trump attacked is Ms. Daniels.
The previous president denies that he and Ms. Daniels had intercourse, and in a single publish for which he was fined, he attacked Ms. Daniels on his web site Fact Social, reviving a years-old assertion by which she denied the affair. Mr. Trump added a remark falsely portraying the assertion as newly found: “LOOK WHAT WAS JUST FOUND! WILL THE FAKE NEWS REPORT IT?”
Mr. Trump failed to notice that the unique assertion was from January 2018 and that Ms. Daniels had recanted it not lengthy afterward.
Throughout final week’s listening to, Justice Merchan targeted on Mr. Trump’s lie about when the assertion got here to gentle.
“In order that’s not true?” he requested Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Todd Blanche.
“That’s not true,” Mr. Blanche conceded.
In Tuesday’s ruling, Justice Merchan concluded that Mr. Trump could possibly be held accountable for reposting different folks’s feedback. In a single occasion, Mr. Trump had quoted a Fox Information commentator, Jesse Watters, denigrating potential jurors within the case as “undercover liberal activists.”
A day after the publish, one of many jurors begged off the panel.
Justice Merchan imposed the order on Mr. Trump in late March, barring public statements about any witnesses, prosecutors, jurors or court docket employees, in addition to their households. He expanded it to cowl his personal family and family of the district lawyer, Alvin L. Bragg after Mr. Trump discovered a loophole and repeatedly attacked the decide’s daughter, whose firm has executed consulting work for Democratic candidates.
Mr. Trump usually assails folks he used to reward and commends these he as soon as pilloried.
Simply earlier than Mr. Davidson took the stand on Tuesday, for instance, prosecutors confirmed a video by which Mr. Trump had praised Mr. Cohen, who had been by his aspect for years. He known as him “a really gifted lawyer.”
Reporting was contributed by Maggie Haberman, Kate Christobek, Wesley Parnell, Michael Gold and Jonathan Swan.