Hush money trial jury hears tape of Trump and Michael Cohen discussing deal – live

The judge presiding over Donald Trump’s hush money trial fired back at his attorney’s attempts to dodge punishment for his comments about the jury – remarks that appear likely to violate a gag order that blocks him from public attacks on witnesses and jurors.

In a contempt hearing on Thursday morning, the former president’s legal team tried to blame at least some of Mr Trump’s potential violations on Michael Cohen, arguing his former attorney and the potential star witness in the case has made “multiple and repeated attacks” on his “credibility” and campaign.

Pulling up several social media posts from Cohen, Mr Trump’s attorney argued that he is “inviting and almost daring Trump to respond to everything he’s saying”.

Throughout the hearing, New York Justice Juan Merchan appeared unconvinced by the defence’s arguments and grew increasingly frustrated with Mr Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche.

At one point, when Mr Blanche claimed that the trial is “political persecution” and a “political trial” in a “jurisdiction” that is politically biased against the former president, Judge Merchan cut him off.

“Did he violate the gag order? That’s what I want to know,” he said. “He spoke about the jury, right? And he said the jury was 95 per cent Democrats and the jury had been rushed through, and the implication that this was not a fair jury?”

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Since the implosion of Michael Cohen’s relationship with his former boss, he has become a reformed ‘truth-teller’, spilling secrets of Trump world. It’s a role he both relishes and reviles, Kelly Rissman reports:

John Bowden has the story:

For the first time in Donald Trump’s hush money trial, jurors heard the former president’s own voice discussing a deal with his former attorney to buy the silence of a former Playboy model who alleged an affair with Mr Trump.

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

“I need to open up a company for the transfer of all that info regarding our friend, David, you know, so that – I’m going to do that right away,” Cohen can be heard saying on the recording.

“And I’ve spoken to Allen Weisselberg about how to set the whole thing up,” Cohen says, referencing the now-convicted former chief financial officer for the Trump Organization.

“So, what do we got to pay for this?” Mr Trump can be heard saying. “150?”

That “David” appears to be David Pecker, the former National Enquirer publisher.

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The former US President made his remarks to supporters during an election rally in Wisconsin on Wednesday (1 May).

Mr Trump said: “We’ve seen what happened when Europe opened its doors to jihad. Look at Paris, look at London, they’re no longer recognisable.

“I’m going to get myself into a lot of trouble with the folks in Paris and the folks in London, but you know what, that’s the fact. They are no longer recognisable and we can’t let that happen to our country.”

“In an effort to stop Trump from falling asleep in court, his lawyers have been giving him a number of different devices”, the comedian said during his opening monologue on the Tonight Show on Wednesday.

“So far, the only thing that can keep him awake is an iPad playing Bluey.”

Mr Fallon continued: “His lawyers are running out of ideas to keep him awake, they even hired a kindergarten teacher to keep him awake by standing at the front of the court saying, ‘Eyes on me, eyes on you’.”

The comic then cut to a spoof commercial for a “Trump Shock Collar”, which the ad described as: “The world’s first human shock collar disguised as a red neck tie!”

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Eric Garcia writes:

On Thursday, President Biden made his way to Wilmington, North Carolina, also making a stop in Charlotte to visit the families of police officers killed in the line of duty. Biden’s trip comes shortly after Vice President Kamala Harris visited Charlotte last month. In fact, both have made multiple journeys down to North Carolina this year.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday, the vice president visited Jacksonville, Florida on the day that the state’s six-week abortion ban came into effect. Harris, as Inside Washington has written before, can zero in on abortion rights in ways that Biden, an 81-year-old Catholic man, cannot. And indeed, Harris delivered some scorching lines against Florida Republicans, saying “extremist” Republican lawmakers who voted in the ban “either don’t know how a woman’s body works, or simply don’t care.”

The president continues to poll badly, even in states that he won in 2020 such as Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Nevada. So why the focus on tough-to-win states like North Carolina and Florida?

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Donald Trump was back in court again on Thursday during his third week of the hush money trial in Manhattan, where jurors heard bombshell recordings between Mr Trump and his former personal attorney Michael Cohen.

The former president’s legal team attempted to defend Mr Trump over his gag order violations on Thursday. Earlier this week, Judge Juan Merchan fined him $9,000 for repeated violations of the order, which bars him from talking about foreseeable witnesses or staff of the judge or DA’s office. Ironically, after court adjourned for the day, Mr Trump falsely claimed to reporters that he was not “allowed to testify” because of the gag order.

The court also saw a different side of Michael Cohen, who has previously been described in the Manhattan courthouse as “excitable” and “pants on fire.”

One witness said he thought Cohen “was going to kill himself” after Cohen found out that Mr Trump, Cohen’s long-term client, wasn’t considering him for top roles in his White House administration.

Here are some takeaways from another day at the hush money trial:

Mr Trump was warned he could face “incarceratory punishment” if he continued bad-mouthing key participants.

He used Wednesday’s recess to hit the campaign trail in Wisconsin and Michigan, delivering a familiar onslaught of insults, grievances, half-truths, and apocalyptic forecasts.

Thursday’s proceedings come after the court has heard key testimony from Gary Farro, the banker for former Trump fixer Michael Cohen, explaining how the $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels to cover up the alleged extramarital affair with Mr Trump was funded.