Tensions are high between Trump lawyer and Stormy Daniels’ lawyer during cross examination
Sam Levine
There is a lot of tension between Emil Bove and Keith Davidson right now.
Davidson clearly is uninterested in talking about past less-than-flattering deals in which he has gotten payments for clients from Charlie Sheen.
Bove keeps saying Davidson “extracted” money from Sheen. “If you’re not here to play legal games, don’t say extract,” Davidson said.
Key events
Sam Levine
Emil Bove is walking through Keith Davidson’s original retaining of Karen McDougal and how he was already pumping her up to the National Enquirer as he tried to sign her as a client.
Tensions are high between Trump lawyer and Stormy Daniels’ lawyer during cross examination
Sam Levine
There is a lot of tension between Emil Bove and Keith Davidson right now.
Davidson clearly is uninterested in talking about past less-than-flattering deals in which he has gotten payments for clients from Charlie Sheen.
Bove keeps saying Davidson “extracted” money from Sheen. “If you’re not here to play legal games, don’t say extract,” Davidson said.
Sam Levine
Emil Bove is going through past unsavory deals that Keith Davidson has been linked to.
Those include the leaking of Lindsay Lohan’s rehab file, a Tila Tequila sex tape, and payments from Charlie Sheen.
Sam Levine
Emil Bove asked Keith Davidson if he was “pretty well versed in getting right up to the line without committing extortion, right?”
Bove raises that Davidson was previously investigated by federal authorities for extorting Hulk Hogan. Davidson confirms that he was. By 2016, Bove says, Davidson must have been familiar with extortion defenses.
Sam Levine
Emil Bove, one of Donald Trump’s lawyers, is cross-examining Keith Davidson.
Davidson is offering more details about his conversation with Michael Cohen’s state of mind in December 2016.
“I thought he was gonna kill himself,” Davidson says. Davidson says Cohen believed he would be chief of staff or the US attorney general but was dismayed Trump was not taking him to Washington.
Here are some images coming through the newswires:
Sam Levine
Prosecutors just had a bit of a stumble with Keith Davidson, as they questioned him about why he told CNN in 2018 that he believed Michael Cohen paid for the deal with Stormy Daniels.
Davidson had previously testified that he believed Trump would ultimately pay, but as election day neared and the deal was not going through, Cohen said “Fuck it, I’ll do it myself.”
After the election, Cohen spoke to Davidson and bemoaned that he had not been paid back. This is an obstacle for prosecutors because Davidson is not linking Trump to the payments.
Keith Davidson’s direct testimony ends for now with one last query from Joshua Steinglass. “Mr Davidson, do you have any stake in the outcome of this trial?”
“No, not at all,” Davidson said.
Joshua Steinglass is now walking Keith Davidson through texts with Michael Cohen on 31 January 2018 where Trump’s then consigliere was frenetic.
“She just denied the letter,” Cohen said. “Claiming it’s not her signature.”
“You said she did it in front of you,” Cohen also texted.
“She did. Impossible – she posted it on her own Twitter page,” Davidson said.
Cohen then pointed to Stormy Daniels’ appearance on Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show.
“They showed her signature and she claimed it was not hers on Kimmel.”
Steinglass asked Davidson: “How did you respond?”
“WTF.”
“I hate to ask, but what does that mean?“ Steinglass asked of the acronym.
“Sort of a signal of exasperation, ‘what the fuck,’” Davidson said.
Trump lawyers likely to use Stormy Daniels’ lawyer’s hush money testimony to their advantage
Hugo Lowell
Donald Trump’s lawyers are likely to seize on Keith Davidson, Stormy Daniels’ lawyer, insisting that he would never characterize the $130,000 payment to Daniels as “hush money” but as “consideration for a settlement agreement” – which sounds legal-related.
Recall that the Manhattan DA’s underlying case is that Trump falsified business records because the $130,000 to Daniels was recorded as legal expenses or legal retainers to Michael Cohen. It is likely that Trump’s lawyers will try to argue “consideration” is a legal expense.
The statement read, “Over the past few weeks, I have been asked countless times to comment on reports of an alleged sexual relationship I had with Donald Trump many, many, many years ago.”
“I’m not denying this affair because I was paid ‘hush money,’” the statement read, adding, “I’m denying this affair because it never happened.”
“I will have no further comment on this matter. Please feel free to check me out on Instagram at @thestormydaniels.”
Again, asked about whether this statement was accurate, Davidson focused on linguistic intricacies. “I think it’s technically true.”
How was this technically true, Joshua Steinglass pressed.
“It’s out,” Michael Cohen texted Keith Davidson on 30 January 2018.
“Apparently there was a news article that had been published. I was receiving hundreds of phone calls at my office,” Davidson said of an account of Stormy Daniels’ and Donald Trump’s affair.
That night, Daniels was supposed to go on Jimmy Kimmel.
He described the drafting of a Daniels’ denial before that appearance. He was in the Marilyn Monroe suite at the Roosevelt Hotel, in Hollywood. “There were makeup artists,” he recalled.
Stormy Daniels’ lawyer says denial of hush money ‘technically correct’
Keith Davidson insisted that her denial was “technically correct.”
“I think you’d have to hone in on the definition of romantic, sexual, and affair,” Davidson said.
“Well, I don’t think that anyone had ever alleged that any interaction between she and Mr Trump was romantic.”
“OK…” Steinglass said with a laugh.
“How about sexual?”
“Well that would be a sexual and/or romantic [affair],” Davidson said.
Steinglass asked about Daniels’ statement that “rumors that I have received hush money from Donald Trump are completely false.”
“How is that technically true,” Steinglass said, later asking, “Would you use the phrase hush money?”
“I would never use that word.”
“And what would be the word that you would use to describe it?”
“Consideration” in a civil settlement, Davidson said.
