Live updates: Jury hears tape of Trump and Michael Cohen discussing hush money deal

During yesterday’s gag order hearing, defence attorney Todd Blanche complained that the prohibition was preventing Trump from responding to mockery by President Biden at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner and by Cohen on social media.

Trump’s former fixer has since forsworn the taunting out of respect for Judge Merchan, he says, but previously derided his old boss as, ahem, “Donald Von Sh**zInPantz”, which, when raised by Blanche, obliged the court stenographer to enter into the court records for all time.

This is seemingly the episode that “inspired” Cohen to invent the nickname, one far crueller than any monicker Trump himself has ever dished out to an opponent.

Among those triggered by this sidestep into the scatalogical was Laura Ingraham on Fox, whose delicate sensibilities were offended.

Here’s Harry Fletcher of Indy100 on Trump supporters’ extraordinary response.

The Washington Post is reporting that Trump’s former White House aide Hope Hicks is “likely to take the stand as early as Friday”.

Hicks, 35, worked for the 45th president’s 2016 campaign and was then his communications director from 2017 to 2018 before returning as counselor to the president from 2020 to 2021.

The Post describes her as “Zelig of Trumpworld” who was “present for nearly every scandal that caught the scrutiny of special counsels, US attorneys, congressional committees, grand juries and federal prosecutors”.

This is simply not true – and smacks of his excuse throughout his presidency that he could not release his tax returns, like every other commander-in-chief, because he was “under audit” by the IRS.

Here’s today’s latest livefeed from Manhattan with Day 11 about to get underway.

For the final time this week, Alex Woodward is down at Manhattan Criminal Court and sends this dispatch:

“A second week of witness testimony is coming to and end.

“Donald Trump’s attorneys will continue to cross examine a forensic analyst from the DA’s office who pulled thousands of files from Michael Cohen’s phones — countless texts, emails and voice recordisngs, including bombshell audio of a secretly recorded conversation from 2016 that captured Cohen and Trump discussing Karen McDougal’s payment.

“But defence attorneys are trying to plant as many seeds of reasonable doubt as they can, suggesting to jurors that such evidence was compromised or potentially manipulated.

“That’s been the defence’s strategy thus far: painting crucial prosecution witnesses as unreliable, giving jurors just enough “reasonable doubt” to chew on when considering a verdict.

“We don’t know who’s next in the witness list, but the star of the show so far is Cohen, who has been the subject of nearly every one of the seven witnesses thus far.

“Meanwhile, Justice Juan Merchan could issue a decision at any time on yesterday’s gag order motions, which could put Trump on the hook for $4,000 or even more severe sanctions for his repeat violations.

“Otherwise it’s a cool and slightly humid morning at the courthouse.”

Here’s Kelly Rissman with our latest round-up of the case, featuring all the highlights from Day 10.

We heard a lot about Cohen during testimony yesterday and it’s just possible he could take the stand as soon as today to give evidence in person.

With that in mind, here’s Kelly Rissman’s look at his soured relationship with Trump and what’s at stake for him in this trial.

Stormy Daniels’ former attorney, the disgraced Michael Avenatti, fired back at Keith Davidson’s testimony yesterday from a jail cell, posting this on X:

Avenatti has said he has been in contact with Trump’s legal team and is willing to testify but is currently serving a prison sentence for attempting to extort Nike and for embezzling settlement funds from several other clients.

Alex Woodward and Gustaf Kilander have the story.

The lawyer who negotiated Stormy Daniels’ $130,000 hush money payment with Michael Cohen thought Trump’s then-attorney was going to “kill himself” after learning he had been left out of a job in the White House after the 2016 presidential election.

In his second day of testimony, Keith Davidson told jurors that Cohen was distraught by mid-December 2016 when he learned he would not be going to Washington DC.

Here’s more from Alex Woodward on the rest of Davidson’s testimony.

This was probably the most dramatic moment from yesterday’s proceedings, when jurors heard Trump’s own voice discussing a deal with his ex-attorney Michael Cohen to buy the silence of a former Playboy model who alleged an affair with the former president.

A portion of the recording – secretly recorded by Cohen while Trump was in the middle of his 2016 campaign for the presidency – have the jury a brief but crucial look into how the “fixer” kept his boss up to date with a scheme that is now central to the criminal case against him.

Here’s Alex Woodward’s report.