Highlights from Trump trial Day 16: Cohen directly implicates Trump in testimony

With Cohen on the stand, jurors again heard the audio recording he secretly made of a meeting with Trump in September 2016 in which they discussed the plan to purchase McDougal’s silence. In the recording, Trump can be heard saying: “What do we got to pay for this? One-fifty?”

Cohen testified that it was the only time that he had ever recorded a conversation with Trump. He said made the recording so Pecker, the National Enquirer publisher, could hear the conversation and be assured that Trump was going to pay him back.

Cohen testified that the recording abruptly cut off because he was receiving an incoming call to his phone, a claim substantiated by cell phone carrier records shown in court. Cohen said the number listed in the carrier records belonged to a bank official who was trying to get ahold of him.

Cohen said the recording was not altered and sounded exactly the same as the day it was recorded. Prosecutors’ questions eliciting that testimony were meant to rebut a suggestion previously raised by the defense that Cohen may have altered the tape.

Earlier in the trial, Trump’s attorneys pressed a witness about the “gaps” in the handling of the phone after Cohen made the recording, along with the abrupt cut-off at the end of the tape.

Cohen spoke in glowing terms about his early days working for Trump, telling jurors he was surprised and honored when the former president first offered him a job. Cohen said he and Trump were so close in the decade Cohen worked for him that the two spoke in person or by phone multiple times every single day.

Cohen did everything from talking with the media to renegotiating bills on Trump’s behalf, including outstanding invoices from 50 vendors of Trump’s failed Trump University project. The praise he got from Trump afterward made him feel like he was “on top of the world,” he told jurors.

“The only thing that was on my mind was to accomplish the task and make him happy,” Cohen said, referring to Trump.

He also lied and bullied on Trump’s behalf, he said. Part of his job included reaching out to reporters whose stories upset Trump, asking them to make changes or take them down — and sometimes threatening legal action. Asked if he had done so in a “strong and threatening manner,” Cohen said he did.

But overall, Cohen told jurors, the job was “fantastic.”

“It was an amazing experience in many, many ways,” he added. “There were great times. There were several less than great times.”

Forget the Empire State Building — Manhattan criminal court is the destination for some New York City tourists.

Out-of-town visitors Joe Adams and Ruth TeBrake said they began lining up at 6:30 p.m. Sunday to successfully snag some of the limited seats in the courtroom and a nearby overflow room that are set aside for members of the public.

It was their second time attending — and they said the long waits were well worth it to snag a coveted spot in the overflow, where the trial is screened on closed-circuit TV.

“I’ve never done anything like this since I was young, since the ‘60s,” said TeBrake, who hails from Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. “There was electricity in the air.”

Adams, from Provincetown, Massachusetts, said he’s never lined up so long for a concert, “but this was really important.”

He figured out a creative way to use the bathroom during the long wait, at a nearby bar that is open into the early hours of the morning.

“I got in there early and I tipped both bartenders $20 each and said, ‘I’ve got two friends. If they come in and say Joe sent me, please let them use the bathroom,’” he said. “They were very sweet.”

Cohen portrayed Trump as deeply involved in the details and decisions of his company, the Trump Organization.

Prosecutors throughout the trial have been trying to elicit such testimony to support the idea that Trump would have known about the payment to Daniels and subsequent reimbursement to Cohen.

Cohen testified that Trump wanted to be updated immediately about any developments regarding the tasks he assigned. Cohen said Trump had an “open-door policy” so executives could meet him in his office, without appointment, and keep him apprised of developments.

“When he would task you with something, he would then say, ‘Keep me informed,’ ‘Let me know what’s going on,’” Cohen testified. That was especially true “if there was a matter that was troubling to him.”

If Trump “learned of it in another manner, that wouldn’t go over well for you,” Cohen testified.

After court wrapped, Trump approached reporters in the hallway and read out quotes from pundits critical of the case, as he has done some prior days.

Among those he quoted was Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, who was among the Republican officials who came to support him at the courthouse earlier in the day.

Cohen will return to the witness stand on Tuesday.

As Cohen seethed over his slashed bonus and not being repaid for the $130,000 he shelled out to Stormy Daniels, he said Trump called him and assured him he’d “take care of it.”

Cohen recalled Trump calling him while he was on a holiday vacation in December 2016. He said the then president-elect told him: “Don’t worry about that other thing, I’m going to take care of it when you get back.”

Cohen said he then met with the Trump Organization’s longtime CFO Allen Weisselberg to discuss getting paid back for the Daniels payment.

“I, of course, brought it up to Mr. Weisselberg to ask, ‘When am I getting the money back?’” Cohen testified. “He said, ‘Let’s sit down, let’s meet, let’s do it.’”

Cohen said Weisselberg asked him to provide a copy of the bank statement showing the $130,000 transfer to Daniels’ lawyer.

Cohen said Weisselberg then wrote out various amounts on the statement, including the $130,000 reimbursement, $50,000 for another expense he said he incurred for technology services, plus a $60,000 bonus.

Cohen said Weisselberg suggested he take the money as income rather than a tax-free reimbursement and added additional funds — know as grossing up — to cover his tax bill.

Looking at the note in court Cohen testified, “I recognize his handwriting but I was also in the room when he was writing it.”

Cohen testified that he did a double take when Trump’s longtime executive assistant Rhona Graff handed him a Christmas card containing that year’s bonus check — as was tradition at the Trump Organization — and saw his usual amount had been cut by two-thirds, despite all he had done and the $130,000 payment.

“I couldn’t believe it,” he said describing himself as “pissed off,” ”beyond angry” and “personally insulted.”

“I was truly insulted. Personally hurt by it. Didn’t understand it. Made no sense,” he said. “It was insulting that the gratitude shown back to me was to cut the bonus by two-thirds.”

Cohen said he took the issue to company CFO Allen Weisselberg. laying into him with “quite a few expletives.”

Weisselberg, he said, advised him to calm down and said he’d take care of it.

“Take it easy. You know Mr. Trump loves you. We’re going to do right by you,” he recalled Weisselberg saying.

After Trump won the election, Cohen knew his role as Trump’s personal fixer wasn’t going to last. But given his unique relationship to the president-elect, Cohen figured he might be considered for one of the most prestigious jobs in the White House: chief of staff.

“I just wanted my name to have been included,” Cohen testified, even as he acknowledged he was likely not “competent” enough for the role. “It was more about my ego than anything.”

Instead, Cohen was offered a position as assistant chief counsel, which he turned down.

He then pitched Trump on the role of being his “personal attorney,” compiling a memo on his credentials and bringing in another attorney well-versed in presidential history to highlight the importance of the job.

Before the break, Cohen testified about a conversation he had with Trump before The Wall Street Journal’s hush money article was published. He said he spoke to Trump via his bodyguard’s phone.

“This was a real serious — again — problem,” he said in court of the situation.

Cohen said that he relayed to Trump that everyone would be on board to deny the story and protect him.

But Trump, Cohen said, was nonetheless upset “because there was a negative story” that could damage the campaign.

When Cohen found out the Wall Street Journal would be publishing a story days before the election about the National Enquirer’s catch-and-kill efforts, he said he held a series of calls to coordinate strategy and figure out how to “change the narrative” and deal with the fallout.

Among the people he spoke with, he said, were Trump’s campaign communications director Hope Hicks, then-National Enquirer publisher David Pecker and Keith Davidson, a lawyer who represented Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels in their hush money deals.

Hicks sent Cohen a series of four different response options in an email shown in court that the campaign was considering releasing to reporters. The proposed responses, which were shown in court, included painting it as an “attempt by the liberal elite to disparage Donald Trump.”

Cohen said he contacted Davidson to make sure that “Ms. Daniels did not go rogue.”

The Wall Street Journal article published on Nov. 4, 2016, just four days before Election Day. The newspaper reported that the National Enquirer had paid Karen McDougal $150,000 to bury her claim of an affair with Trump.

On Oct. 27, 2016, less than two weeks before the 2016 election, Cohen finalized the payments to buy Daniels’ story.

Immediately, he went to Trump to inform him the deal was done.

“The task he gave to me was finished, accomplished and done,” Cohen testified, before pointing to a second reason for updating his boss: “to take credit for myself so that he knew I had done it and finished it, because this was important.”

Jurors are following along with Cohen’s testimony, some taking notes and most peering down at monitors to view various exhibits, such as phone records, emails and the Daniels hush money agreement.

But the panel — 12 jurors and seven alternates — is nowhere near as engrossed as it was last week when Daniels was on the witness stand. Several jurors look tired or bored as they sit through post-lunch testimony touching on the terms of the Daniels deal and the mechanics of Cohen’s wiring the $130,000 payment to Daniels’ lawyer.

Some jurors perked up when the discussion turned to the pseudonyms used in the deal for Trump and Daniels — David Dennison and Peggy Peterson.

Cohen is testifying to the significance of the many phone logs, text messages and emails that have been shown to jurors throughout the trial.

Among them: a call just after 8 p.m. on Oct. 24, 2016, from Cohen to Trump’s bodyguard, Keith Schiller.

Asked to explain, Cohen testified that he needed to speak with Trump “to discuss the Stormy Daniels matter and the resolution of it” and he knew that Schiller would be with him.

Another call from Cohen to then-Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg was logged in a cell carrier’s records as at 7:25 p.m. on Oct. 25, 2016. Cohen said that call also “had to do with the Stormy Daniels matter.”

Asked by a prosecutor if there was any urgency, given that the call happened after normal business hours, Cohen responded: “significant urgency.”

That same day, a prosecutor noted, Cohen had a flurry of calls with then-National Enquirer publisher David Pecker on the encrypted messaging app Signal.

Cohen said he was speaking with Pecker about the Daniels deal — and even made a failed, last-ditch effort to get the publisher to foot the hush-money bill. As for the volume of calls, Cohen explained: “Signal is terrible with keeping phone calls. They drop all the time.”

Two days later, Cohen made the hush money payment through the bank account of the company he created, wiring $130,000 to Daniels’ lawyer, Keith Davidson.

Cohen said that before he went to First Republic Bank to open up the account that would be used to pay Daniels, he had one last conversation with Trump in which he informed the candidate of what he was doing.

“Everything required Mr. Trump’s sign off,” Cohen testified, adding that. “On top of that, I wanted the money back.”

After Cohen agreed to front the money to keep the story from coming out, he still had one more bit of deception: making sure his wife, whom he called the “CEO of the household,” didn’t find out.

To do so, he took out a home equity line of credit, in part because the bank would send him updates electronically, rather than to his home, keeping his wife out of the loop.

“I clearly could not tell her and that would’ve been a problem for me” if she found out, he said. He figured he could easily return the money once Trump paid him back. “Nobody would be the wiser,” he added.

“He expressed to me: Just do it,” Cohen testified, saying Trump advised him to meet with CFO Allen Weisselberg and figure it out.

Cohen said that he suggested Weisselberg offer up the money, given his seven figure salary. But Weisselberg, Cohen recounted, “said that he wasn’t in the financial position to do,” with obligations to pay for his grandkids’ summer camps and private schools.

So Cohen made a decision.

“I ultimately said, ‘OK, I’ll pay it.’”

Daniels’ then-lawyer, Davidson, emailed Cohen on Oct. 17, 2016, saying that Daniels was canceling the deal because she hadn’t been paid. There were also indications Daniels was looking to tell her story to another news outlet.

Shortly thereafter, phone records show, Cohen called Trump, though the call lasted only eight seconds. Cohen said the call went to voicemail and he left a message for Trump.

Cohen testified that he called “in order to advise him of this situation.”

“Because I didn’t forward the funds, she has now declared the agreement void and we would not be in a position to delay it post-election, like he had wanted to do.”

That same day, Cohen said then-National Enquirer editor Dylan Howard told him in a text message that Daniels may have been shopping her story to another news outlet. The text message was shown in court.

The next day, Cohen testified, he received a text message from Trump’s wife, Melania, asking him to call Trump.

“Good morning Michael, can u pls call DT on his cell. Thanks,” the message shown in court said.

Cohen said he knew that he’d have to mask the true purpose of the bank account that he opened to pay the money to Stormy Daniels.

“I’m not sure they would’ve opened it,” he continued, “if it stated: to pay off an adult film star for a nondisclosure agreement.”

Indeed, earlier in the trial, an employee at First Republic Bank testified that they had specific rules about becoming involved with people in certain industries, including porn.

So, Cohen initially said his account was for a new limited liability corporation called Resolution Consultants. But then, Cohen said, “It dawned on me. It’s the name of the company of someone I know.”

Soon after, Cohen changed the name of the account to Essential Consultants.

Following the lunch break, Cohen said he used the Jewish high holiday of Yom Kippur — the day of atonement — as one of many excuses to delay completing the $130,000 hush money deal with Stormy Daniels.

Cohen testified that Trump implored him to delay finalizing the transaction and paying Daniels until after election day so he wouldn’t have to pay her.

“Because after the election it wouldn’t matter,” Cohen testified.

“According to who?” prosecutor Susan Hoffinger asked.

“Mr. Trump,” Cohen replied.

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Cohen testified that he and Daniels’ lawyer Keith Davidson had come to terms on an agreement by Oct. 11, 2016, just days after they’d started negotiating.

The next day, Davidson emailed Cohen: “We good?”

Cohen responded that since it was Yom Kippur “the office is for all purposes closed” but that he was available for the next three hours by phone if necessary.

Davidson then replied that it wasn’t necessary to speak, that they’d connect the next day, and that Cohen should have “all the executed documents.”

While waiting for the jury to return, Cohen sat in the witness box, making slight facial movements, blinking his eyes and pursing his lips. Trump, meanwhile, chatted with his lawyer Todd Blanche.

District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who watched Cohen’s testimony Monday morning from the courtroom gallery, has not returned for the afternoon session.

Cohen perked his eyes up toward the judge’s bench as he entered the courtroom to resume testimony after the lunch break. He avoided looking over at Trump as he passed the defense table. Trump appeared to be looking straight ahead, not in Cohen’s direction.

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As Donald Trump’s hush money trial reaches a pivotal moment the former president’s allies are out in force and serving as his voice to criticize the process and people while Trump himself is under a gag order.

Trump was accompanied to court Monday by some of his top congressional surrogates, including U.S. Sens. JD Vance of Ohio and Tommy Tuberville of Alabama.

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Before lunch, Cohen relayed Trump’s reaction to news of the Daniels accusation right on the heels of the “Access Hollywood” tape.

Trump, he said, “was really angry,” telling Cohen, “I thought you had this under control. I thought you took care of this.”

“He said to me, ‘This is a disaster, total disaster. Women are going to hate me. Women will hate me. Guys, they think it’s cool, but this is going to be a disaster for the campaign,” Cohen testified, noting Trump was polling “very poorly with women” at the time.

Cohen said Trump advised him to work with Pecker to deal with the matter.

When asking Trump how the story would impact his wife, Melania, Cohen testified the then-candidate responded, “Don’t worry,” adding: “How long do you think I’ll be on the market for? Not long.”

That, he said, led him to conclude, “This was all about the campaign.”

Trump did not visibly respond as Cohen spoke.

Cohen testified that he first spoke with Trump about Stormy Daniels in 2011 after a gossip website published an article alleging the two had a sexual encounter.

Trump said he knew Daniels and that she was “a beautiful woman,” using the same adjective he had used for McDougal. He didn’t respond when asked if he’d had sex with her, Cohen testified.

Trump said he’d met Daniels at a celebrity golf outing in 2006 and that she had taken a liking to him — even in a room full of football players like Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, among other stars.

Trump, Cohen said, told him, “She likes Mr. Trump and that women prefer Mr. Trump even over someone like Big Ben!”
Nevertheless, Cohen said Trump took him up on his offer to get the story taken down.

“Absolutely. Do it. Take care of it,” Cohen recalled Trump saying.

Cohen later worked with lawyer Keith Davidson, who later represented Daniels in the 2016 hush money deal, to get the story taken down.

Cohen testified that he thought the “Access Hollywood” tape would be damaging to the Trump campaign, especially among women.

After the tape was released, Text messages between Cohen and then-CNN anchor Chris Cuomo showed that Cuomo asked Cohen whether he intended to defend the then-candidate on TV.

Cohen wrote that he was traveling in London and had been asked to begin doing interviews when he returned to New York.

“Will be too late. He is dying right now,” Cuomo responded.

Cohen said he became aware of the “Access Hollywood” tape after the campaign was contacted for comment by a Washington Post reporter.

He said he immediately reached out to Steve Bannon, who was then a senior campaign official, to see how they were handling things.

“I wanted to ensure that things were properly being taken care of to protect Mr. Trump,” Cohen testified.

He said he later spoke with Trump, who advised him to try to “get control over the story” and “minimize its impact.” According to Cohen, Trump wanted him to cast the story as “locker room talk” — a term he suggested might have been recommended by former first lady Melania Trump.

Cohen recounted the call as a prosecutor, Susan Hoffinger, showed jurors cell phone call records detailing a seven-minute-and-14-second call between Cohen and Trump on Sept. 29, 2016.

That was the day before Cohen was to sign an agreement to acquire the rights.

Cohen said he spoke to Trump “in order to let him know that it was being taken care of … and that it was being resolved.”

Cohen testified that he personally had no interest in acquiring the rights to McDougal’s story, telling jurors: “What I was doing was at the direction of and benefit of Mr. Trump.”

Ultimately, then-National Enquirer publisher David Pecker backed out of the deal, Cohen said.

Cohen recalled Pecker telling him it was no longer necessary for Trump to reimburse American Media Inc. for the cost because an issue of Men’s Health magazine — one of the company’s other publications — that featured McDougal on the cover had sold far better than the company had anticipated.

“He felt it was, even for the $150,000, it was an excellent business deal,” Cohen said of Pecker.

As he worked to secure funding for the $150,000 payment, Cohen said he received guidance from Allen Weisselberg, then the Trump Organization’s CFO: “Allen then said to me, if we do it from a Trump entity that kind of defeats the purpose because the point is not to have the Trump name affiliated with this at all,” Cohen said he was told. He added that Weisselberg wanted to “really create a barrier.”

The conversation with Weisselberg happened right after he briefed Trump about the deal to acquire McDougal’s story from the National Enquirer, Cohen testified.

In response to two questions by the prosecutor, Cohen affirmed that the recording he’d secretly made of Trump was not altered and sounded exactly the same as the day it was recorded. The questions were meant to elicit a response to an argument previously raised by the defense, accusing Cohen of altering the tape.

Earlier in the trial, Trump’s attorneys pressed a technical witness about the “gaps” in the handling of the phone after Cohen made the recording, along with the abrupt cut-off at the end of the tape — which Cohen said was the result of an incoming call from a bank official.

Cohen testified that the recorded conversation played in court was the only one he had ever made between him and Trump.

Cohen said he made the recording “so I could show it to David Pecker and that way he would hear the conversation and he would know that we’re going to be paying him back, that Mr. Trump was going to be paying him back.”

Cohen testified that the recording abruptly cut off because he was receiving an incoming call to his phone, a claim substantiated by cell phone carrier records shown in court. Referencing his contact list, Cohen said the number listed in the carrier records belonged to a bank official who was trying to get ahold of him.

Cohen testified Monday that he didn’t feel he needed to record any more of the conversation, anyway.

“I didn’t want to record more,” Cohen testified. “I already had enough to show David Pecker as to convince him that he was going to receive the $150,000 back.”

Cohen testified that after the recording cut off, he told Trump that he was going to go to Weisselberg’s office to discuss the plan further and that he would get back to Trump with an update.

Before the break, jurors heard for the second time an audio recording Cohen surreptitiously made of himself briefing Trump in September 2016 about a plan to buy the rights to McDougal’s story from the National Enquirer.

This time, they had Cohen on the witness stand narrating and annotating the recording as it was being played.

After playing the nearly three-minute recording all the way through, Assistant District Attorney Susan Hoffinger stopped the tape at certain intervals for Cohen to describe what was happening and who he was talking about.

“I need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info regarding our friend, David,” Cohen is heard saying in the recording, which he said he made using the Voice Memos app on his iPhone.

Cohen testified that he wanted to set up a company for the transaction “in order to have separation” between Trump and the deal. He said “all of that info” included not just McDougal’s story, but anything else about Trump that might have been in American Media Inc.’s files.

As the recording continued, Cohen is heard telling Trump, “I’ve spoken to Allen Weisselberg about how to set the whole thing up.”

Trump replies, “So, what do we got to pay for this? One-fifty?”

Weisselberg was the Trump Organization’s longtime chief financial officer. “Every penny that came in or out went through Allen’s office,” Cohen testified.

Cohen is then heard talking about financing the deal, which on Monday he noted was an error and that what he really meant was funding. Trump is then heard talking about paying in cash, or “green” as Cohen described it on the witness stand — which he testified would have been another way to avoid a paper trail.

When the recording was first played in full, before he was asked for his insights, Cohen shook his head and pulled his glasses off as the September 2016 audio recording played and a transcript was shown on a monitor in front of him. He then took a swig of water and put his fingers to his lips as Trump’s recorded voice was heard booming in the courtroom.

He offers direct, matter-of-fact responses to the prosecutor’s questions, quickly recalling details of years-old encounters while displaying little emotion.

It’s a contrast from Cohen’s last time on a witness stand in front of his former boss, when he sparred with Trump’s defense attorney, raising his voice at times and announcing his own “objections” to certain questions.

After the National Enquirer shelled out $150,000 to suppress McDougal’s story about Trump, Cohen testified that the tabloid’s publisher was hounding him to get Trump to reimburse him for the cost.

“It was too much money for him to hide from the CEO of the parent company” and he’d already laid out $30,000 for the doorman story, Cohen testified. He recounted meeting Pecker at his favorite Italian restaurant and the publisher being upset about not being repaid.

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Cohen said at some point Pecker had also expressed to him that his company, American Media Inc., had a “file drawer or a locked drawer as he described it, where files related to Mr. Trump were located.”

Cohen said he was concerned because Pecker’s relationship with Trump went back years and that Pecker was in the running to head another media company. Cohen feared what would happen to the files if Pecker left.

He said Trump also shared those concerns.

Cohen recounted a conversation he heard between Trump and Pecker as the McDougal negotiations progressed.

Cohen testified that he was with Trump as the then-presidential candidate spoke to Pecker on speakerphone in his Trump Tower office.

“He asked him how things were going with the matter, and David said, ‘We have this under control and we’ll take care of this,’” Cohen testified.

Answering a prosecutor’s follow-up question, Cohen said Trump and Pecker also discussed how much it would cost to suppress McDougal’s story.

“David stated it would cost $150,000 to control the story,” Cohen said. He said Trump then told the publisher: “No problem. I’ll take care of it.”

Prior to the Trump-Pecker call, Cohen testified that he’d had his own call with the National Enquirer’s Pecker and Howard, who had just flown to Los Angeles to meet with McDougal.

“I’ll get this locked down for you and I won’t let it out of my grasp,” Cohen recalled Howard telling him.

Cohen testified that he went to Trump immediately after the National Enquirer alerted him about a story being peddled that alleged Trump had had an affair with former Playboy model Karen McDougal.

Cohen recalled going to Trump’s office, telling him, “Hey boss, I gotta talk to you,” and asking Trump if he knew McDougal or anything about the story.

“His response to me was, ‘She’s really beautiful,’” Cohen testified.

Cohen said Trump then told him, “Make sure it doesn’t get released.”

Cohen said he communicated regularly with Pecker and Howard at the National Enquirer to stop the story from getting out. He said the tabloid executives updated him regularly on their discussions and that he kept Trump apprised of developments.

Cohen said he thought the story would have a “significant” impact on Trump’s campaign if it were published.

The McDougal news came on the heels of the National Enquirer paying $30,000 to squash a doorman’s rumor about Trump, which Cohen claims he helped craft.

Cohen testified about his role in brokering a deal to buy a potentially damaging story from a Trump Tower doorman, Dino Sajudin, in order “to take it off the market.” It’s a story jurors have heard already from prior witnesses — but Cohen is speaking directly about Trump’s role in the catch-and-kill scheme.

Cohen said he went to Trump immediately after learning about the story — which claimed, falsely, that Trump had a child out of wedlock. In reply, Trump told him, “You handle it,” according to Cohen.

Cohen then worked with the National Enquirer’s David Pecker and Dylan Howard to pay Sajudin $30,000 for the story. Cohen said he suggested the $1 million penalty for the doorman if he broke terms.

Many jurors are jotting notes as he speaks.

Cohen offered his side of an August 2015 meeting at Trump Tower where former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker testified he’d offered to be the “eyes and eyes” of the campaign, looking out for negative stories before they were published.

Cohen testified that Pecker offered to publish positive stories about Trump and negative stories about his opponents. He said the publisher also offered to “keep an eye out for anything negative about Mr. Trump and that he would be able to help us know in advance what was coming out and try and stop it from coming out.”

Among the negative stories, Cohen cited: Hillary Clinton wearing very thick glasses and allegations that she had a brain condition, a photo of Sen. Ted Cruz’s father purportedly with John F. Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, and an article alleging Marco Rubio had been involved in “a drug binge of some sort.”

Cohen testified that National Enquirer owner American Media Inc. would send over covers of their tabloids and that he would show them to Trump, in part as a way of showing that Pecker was a man of his word.

Trump’s reaction to the stories: “It’s fantastic, it’s unbelievable.”

Cohen said he was seeking to harness the power of the National Enquirer to Trump’s benefit, given its high visibility next to the cash registers at tens of thousands of supermarkets across the U.S.

“You know that when this comes out, meaning the announcement, just be prepared — there’s going to be a lot of women coming forward,” Cohen recalled saying.

Though he was never an official paid member of Trump’s campaign, he nonetheless had a campaign mail address, served as a Trump surrogate, often spoke to reporters and launched a diversity coalition group.

He said that he went to Trump at one point and noted that his rallies were “very white and you really need diversity. If you’re going to win, you need diversity, so I started a group called Diversity Coalition for Trump.”

Cohen recalled one of Trump’s early flirtations with a presidential bid in 2011. At the time, Cohen said he created a website — ShouldTrumpRun.com — that drew many visitors.

“It was further proof that his name recognition, his popularity, especially because of the hit show The Apprentice, was so strong,” Cohen said.

Trump ultimately decided not to run during that cycle but “promised” that he would in the next election cycle, Cohen testified. “He said, ‘I’m doing it,’” Cohen recalled.

In order to get people on the phone for his old boss quickly, Cohen said Trump’s contact list was incorporated into his own list on the two cell phones he turned over to prosecutors during the investigation that led to Trump’s indictment.

Cohen testified that Trump wanted his contacts on Cohen’s phone because they spent a considerable amount of time together and he’d say, “Michael, get me so and so on the line.”

One of Cohen’s phones had more than 30,000 contacts, according to trial testimony.

Cohen gave prosecutors the phones, which he’d used through 2018, so that they could preserve evidence related to the Daniels payment.

That included voice recordings of conversations he had with Keith Davidson, a lawyer for Daniels, as well as emails and text messages.

Despite claiming the job was overall “fantastic,” Cohen also acknowledged that his job required him to lie and bully on his boss’s behalf.

“The only thing that was on my mind was to accomplish the task and make him happy,” Cohen said, referring to his former boss.

Asked if he sometimes lied for Trump, Cohen replied: “I did.” Likewise, he said he acted as a bully at times.

Cohen testified that Trump wanted to be updated immediately on any developments in the tasks he assigned.

“When he would task you with something, he would then say, ‘Keep me informed,’ ‘Let me know what’s going on,’” Cohen said, especially “if there was a matter that was troubling to him.”

“If he learned of it in another manner, that wouldn’t go over well for you,” Cohen testified.

Cohen said Trump had an “open-door policy” allowing executives to meet him in his office, without appointment, and keep him apprised of developments.

Though now a fierce critic of Trump, Cohen spoke glowingly about working for the former president, noting the company was “a big family.”

“It was fantastic. Working for him, especially during those 10 years, was an amazing experience in many, many ways,” Cohen testified. “There were great times. There were also several less than great times.”