Trump trial live: Hope Hicks details Access Hollywood tape fallous in testimony

Here are the key takeaways from the day in court:

Trump walks back Thursday’s claim gag order stops him from testifying

On Thursday as he left the courtroom and delivered his usual diatribe to the assembled media, Donald Trump claimed that because of the gag order imposed by Judge Juan Merchan, he was prohibited from testifying in his own defence.

Hicks recalls impact of Access Hollywood tape on campaign

Hope Hicks testified that she found out about the infamous Access Hollywood tape of Mr Trump making remarks about allegedly sexually assaulting women on the afternoon of 7 October 2016 — just a month before the election.

After possibly denting Trump’s defence, Hicks cries on stand

Under questioning by prosecution attorney Matthew Colangelo, Ms Hicks testified that Mr Trump told her that Cohen made the Stormy Daniels hush money payment on his own.

The late-night host, a long-running enemy of the defendant, was only too delighted when his 2018 interview with Stormy Daniels was mentioned in court yesterday and says he would be happy to testify if called.

Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign was seized with worry about the potential political damage from a tape that showed him bragging about grabbing women sexually without their permission, longtime Trump adviser Hope Hicks testified.

Ms Hicks, a former White House official, was compelled to testify by Manhattan prosecutors, who are hoping her remarks bolster their argument that the uproar over the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape hastened Mr Trump’s then-lawyer to pay off Stormy Daniels to bury a negative story.

Ms Hicks described being stunned and huddling with other Trump advisers after learning about the tape’s existence from the Washington Post reporter who broke the story.

She forwarded the reporter’s request to campaign leadership with the recommendation to “deny, deny, deny,” she said.

“I had a good sense to believe this was going to be a massive story and that it was going to dominate the news cycle for the next several days,” Ms Hicks testified. “This was a damaging development.”

She added: “This was just pulling us backwards in a way that was going to be hard to overcome.”

Amelia Neath and Kelly Rissman report:

“Everybody can say anything they want, except for President Trump,” his attorney Todd Blanche explained to the judge.

Mr Blanche then continued to show a series of posts by Michael Cohen, Mr Trump’s former personal attorney, to the courtroom that mocked the former president and labelled him with insulting names.

Once a key member of Trump’s inner circle, the two have not spoken since 2022. But according to insiders, Ms Hicks remains fond of the ex-president and wants nothing but the best for him — even as she appears under subpoena to give evidence in his so-called hush money trial.

Joe Sommerlad takes a look at who she is and how she got to the heart of Trumpworld.

While Michael Cohen isn’t on the witness stand yet, he’s still the star of the show. The man who arranged the payment to Ms Daniels and negotiated a tentative deal for former Playboy model Karen McDougal is on the lips of nearly every witness, we see his texts and emails to multiple witnesses, and we even hear his voice on secretly recorded audio collected from his phones. He will soon be a central witness.

Here are the key takeaways from the second week of testimony in Mr Trump’s hush money trial:

The prosecution’s star witness has yet to take the stand in Donald Trump‘s hush money trial. But jurors are already hearing Michael Cohen‘s words as prosecutors work to directly tie Trump to payments to silence women with damaging claims about him before the 2016 election.

Alex Woodward reports from the courthouse in Lower Manhattan:

The emotional moment from Hope Hicks inside a Manhattan criminal court on Friday followed revealing testimony about her damage control in the weeks before Election Day, and her behind-the-scenes public relations efforts to salvage Mr Trump’s campaign while stories about his alleged affairs and vulgar comments about women were piling up.