Stormy Daniels' lawyer was quizzed as a witness in Trump's bulls*** trial.
He made a bunch of statements that are very helpful to Trump.
First of all, he made it clear that Stormy Daniels was pressuring Trump to pay her off or else she'd go public with her claims.
This is called "blackmail" in most jurisdictions. Jurors may well wonder who the victim is here. Surely not the "New York state political disclosure laws."
The ex-lawyer of adult film actress Stormy Daniels testified Thursday that he thought Donald Trump was "going to lose" the 2016 presidential election, and pressed trump's ex-lawyer Michael Cohen to settle the payment before losing "leverage."
During the final rounds of questioning to Daniel's lawyer, Keith Davidson, he admitted he spoke to Cohen, pressing him to settle the $130,000 payment to Daniels to quiet her claims of an alleged extramarital affair she had with Trump in 2006, before the 2016 election. He said Trump "will lose", and subsequently his client would lose her leverage. Trump has denied every having the affair.
That phone call was described as intense and full of expletives. Trump's defense team is hoping to connect that call with Davidson's alleged pattern of squeezing people for money during vulnerable times.
Well, yeah.
Next, for reasons I'm not clear on, the sleazebag extortionist insisted that the payments to Stormy Daniels were not hush money at all.
The jury doesn't have to accept his claim. But the Soros DA is claiming Trump covered up "hush money" payments, and the party who negotiated those payments (or extorted them) says they weren't hush money payments at all.
They were just "consideration." The quid for the quo of Stormy Daniels not carrying through with her blackmail threat.
Davidson earlier Thursday said that the $130,000 payment to Daniels was not "hush money," but a "consideration" payment.
Consideration" is a contractual legal term for what someone gives in return for the promise to abide by a contract; in this case, money. The payment was labeled "legal fees" in Trump's accounting, which prosecutors allege amounted to fraud.
Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Johsua Steinglass earlier pressed Davidson about Daniels' statement, which Davidson prepared for his client, that denied any relationship with Trump and said that her only interaction with Trump was "a few public appearances and nothing more."
"Rumors that I have received hush money from Donald Trump are completely false," the statement says."I don't believe that Stormy ever alleged that any interaction with Trump was 'romantic,'" Davidson testified Thursday.
But it is his understanding that Daniels had a sexual encounter with Trump.He also said the payment "wasn't a payoff.""It wasn't a payoff. And it wasn't hush money. It was consideration," Davidson said. Davidson added that he would never use "hush money" to describe the money exchange. He would only refer to it as "consideration."
Finally, the extortionist revealed reasons to doubt the Soros DA's "star witness" Michael Cohen. Cohen was so distraught that Trump was not taking him to DC that he considered suicide.
That is a huge motive to lie to get vengeance.
"Can you f---ing believe I'm not going to Washington after everything I've done for that guy. I can't believe I'm not going to Washington...I've save[d] his a--..."Cohen told Davidson. According to Davidson, Cohen wanted to be Attorney General or White House chief of staff.
Davidson testified that he thought Cohen was so distressed that he wasn't going to work in the Trump administration that he might kill himself.
Trump continues thwarting the Democrats' scheme to keep him too tied up in court to do any campaigning: