The cut price with Ms. Daniels, hashed out within the marketing campaign’s last month, was much less clean. Mr. Pecker refused to pay her, placing the onus on Mr. Trump, and subsequently Mr. Cohen. When Mr. Trump was gradual to resolve, hoping the menace would subside after Election Day, Mr. Cohen mentioned that he used each possible excuse to stall Ms. Daniels’s lawyer, even the holiest of Jewish holidays — Yom Kippur, the day of atonement.
“I used to be following instructions,” Mr. Cohen defined.
However Ms. Daniels grew to become impatient and threatened to stroll away, prompting Mr. Cohen to pay out of his personal pocket. Mr. Cohen mentioned he informed Mr. Trump “instantly” as soon as he closed the deal, an assertion backed up by cellphone information.
“I used to be doing every part that I may and extra so as to defend my boss,” Mr. Cohen informed the jury, “which was one thing I had finished for a very long time.”
It paid off. Mr. Trump received the election just a few days later.
However Mr. Cohen misplaced his endurance when Mr. Trump didn’t award him a job in Washington, and gave him what he felt was an insultingly small bonus. He conveyed his anger to the Trump Group’s chief monetary officer, Allen H. Weisselberg, who promised that Mr. Trump would increase the bonus and reimburse him for the hush cash.
Mr. Weisselberg drafted a plan, memorialized in notes that prosecutors displayed within the courtroom, after which, Mr. Cohen testified, Mr. Trump blessed it.
“Did he present this doc to Mr. Trump?” a prosecutor, Susan Hoffinger, requested.
“He did,” Mr. Cohen mentioned. “He accredited it.”
Reporting was contributed by Kate Christobek, Alan Feuer, Jesse McKinley, Jonathan Swan and Wesley Parnell.
