Hush-money trial zooms in on paper trail and Trump's work habits

Here is today's court sketch of Madeleine Westerhout, Trump's assistant while he was in the White House.

Artist Jane Rosenberg portrayed her very differently yesterday, when she captured the moment Westerhout teared up talking about why she had to resign from her job (because she leaked private information about the Trump family).

Reuters/ Jane RosenbergCopyright: Reuters/ Jane Rosenberg

Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanche briefly talked about Michael Cohen, who posted on TikTok recently in a shirt with Donald Trump on it.

“This witness is allowed to continue to talk. I request that the court order the government to instruct the witness to not talk about President Trump, or this case, until the case is over,” Blanche says.

The prosecution says it has repeatedly told witnesses not to comment on the case. They say they have no control beyond asking, and witnesses are not subject to a gag order.

The judge tells the prosecutors to instruct Cohen to stop making public statements about Donald Trump.

And with that, court has finished for the week.

The jurors have left but the lawyers are deep in discussion still.

They are talking about former Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg.

The judge says it seems “we want to explain why he is not here” but not get into the reasoning.

The reason he’s not been called so far is because he's in prison for perjury. The judge says an incarcerated person can still be a witness.

Neither the prosecution or the defence has subpoenaed him at this stage.

The prosecution has told the court that they have two more witnesses for this trial, and should be able to rest their case by the end of next week.

US media is reporting Michael Cohen will be on the stand on Monday, and he's the key witness to the whole case for the prosecution.

We don’t yet know who the final witness could be, though.

After a short back-and-forth about a call log with AT&T, the witness is told he may leave.

Jurors are being excused and court is wrapping up for the day.

Justice Merchan reminds jurors not to speak about the case. Court will resume on Monday morning.

Cross-examination is over and now we are back listening to the prosecution for their redirect.

We’re now talking about Michael Cohen’s phone number.

Jarmel-Schneider is nodding along as he starts answering questions about summaries that he compiled of phone records.

Trump’s legal team is asking about the timing of phone calls, and if they occurred after certain text messages.

After looking over a series of invoices, the prosecution wraps up and we are onto the cross-examination.

Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanche asks if the work was tedious, compiling all the data.

Jarmel-Schneider replies, “I kind of enjoyed it”.

It gets some laughs from the courtroom, and Blanche says he “respects” that.

While the lawyers hold a sidebar with the judge, Donald Trump remains at his seat and is leafing through a stack of paper.

He’s writing notes, or maybe underlining with his pen. It’s been a relatively slow day in court, compared to Thursday’s testimony from Stormy Daniels.

And Trump has been sitting quietly and observing.

We now hear exactly whose phone records, and what conversations, were pulled by the Manhattan District Attorneys office.

Most of them are records of calls between Trump's fixer Michael Cohen and other key figures in this case.

One set of records is between Trump's fixer Michael Cohen and National Enquirer editor Dylan Howard.

And one set is “calls between the defendant [Trump] and Michael Cohen."

David Jarmel-Schnieder is here to help prosecutors introduce the phone records he reviewed while working on this case.

The district attorney's office needed phone records because they wanted to give the jury a sense of how they figured out which phone numbers were associated with each person, and how they wound up in evidence in this case.

It's a big day for the paralegals.

Prosecutors call up yet another paralegal from their team: David Jarmel-Schneider.

He strides up from the benches on the prosecutions side and up to the witness stand.

In an interesting dynamic, being questioned under oath by their superiors.

After entering reams of text messages into evidence, the prosecution steps down.

Todd Blanche, Trump's lawyer, handles the cross-examination. But it's all over in a matter of minutes.

That's a wrap for this witness.

We're seeing more conversations between Gina Rodriguez, Stormy Daniels then-manager, and Dylan Howard, former editor of the National Enquirer tabloid.

In mid-October 2016, the deal for Cohen to arrange a $130,000 payment to Daniels seemed to be falling apart.

We've heard one side of this story from Keith Davidson, the lawyer who was negotiating the deal for Daniels with Cohen. He testified earlier in the case and said that he had begun to lose trust in Cohen because he seemed to be delaying the payment.

Now we're hearing how other parties reacted.

Rodriguez texted Howard: "We’re not doing the Trump deal".

Howard replied: "Keith gave me a heads up, what happened?"

Rodriguez responds "they didn’t pay when they said they would".

Howard texts Rodriguez that it's "their loss," and she texts back that she agrees.

During Stormy Daniels own testimony, we heard that she considered pulling the plug on the whole deal, because the payment deadline was missed.

The final text message read out in court is from Howard to Rodriguez on 26 October, 2016.

"Good news I hear," Howard says.

While Trump's tweet about Cohen not being a good lawyer got laughs in the overflow courtroom, there's a purpose to prosecutors introducing some of his tweets.

A crucial thread shows Trump in 2018 acknowledge that Cohen arranged a payment to Daniels, but denying her claim they had a sexual encounter or that the payment violated campaign finance rules.

One thread reads:

"Mr. Cohen, an attorney, received a monthly retainer, not from the campaign and having nothing to do with the campaign, from which he entered into, through reimbursement, a private contract between two parties, known as a non-disclosure agreement, or NDA. These agreements are...

"...very common among celebrities and people of wealth. In this case it is in full force and effect and will be used in Arbitration for damages against Ms. Clifford (Daniels). The agreement was used to stop the false and extortionist accusations made by her about an affair...

"Despite already having signed a detailed letter admitting that there was no affair. Prior to its violation by Ms. Clifford and her attorney, this was a private agreement. Money from the campaign, or campaign contributions, played no roll in this transaction."

Prosecutors are now showing Georgia Longstreet a series of 2016 text message exchanges between Stormy Daniels' then-manager Gina Rodriguez to National Enquirer editor Dylan Howard.

They are discussing a possible deal to have Daniels tell her story of a sexual encounter with Trump to the tabloid.

In one text, Rodriguez texted Howard: "I have her."

He responds: "Is she ready to talk?" and adds that he thought she denounced the story previously.

Rodriguez responds that Daniels is willing to talk, under certain conditions.

Here in the overflow room, members of the public have burst out laughing.

The reason for the chuckles is a tweet from 2018, where Donald Trump says: "If anyone is looking for a good lawyer, I would strongly suggest that you don't retain the services of Michael Cohen!"

The tweet is shown on a large screen, and witness Georgia Longstreet reads it out loud.

She is asked if it ends with an exclamation mark.

Yes, she says.

Back on the stand is Georgia Longstreet, a paralegal with the DA's office.

We've heard from her earlier, as she served to introduce evidence like Trump's social media posts and other documents relevant to the case.

Her testimony was cut short, we later learned, so that Trump's former communications director Hope Hicks could testify.