Testimony in Donald Trump‘s hush money case is set to resume Tuesday morning at what could be the midpoint of the first criminal trial against a former U.S. president.
At the end of Monday’s court proceedings, New York state Judge Juan Merchan asked prosecutors how the case was proceeding from a scheduling perspective and how much time they needed going forward.
“This week plus next week and possibly into the week after,” Joshua Steinglass of the Manhattan district attorney’s office said. “Two weeks from tomorrow, maybe?”
The trial is in its third week of testimony.
The exchange between Merchan and prosecutors took place after a day of testimony from a former Trump Organization controllerand an accounts payable supervisor at the company who was the first current employee to take the stand.
It’s not clear who the next witness will be. Steinglass told Merchan on Monday that prosecutors have been trying to keep that information under wraps because Trump has repeatedly gone after two expected witnesses — his former lawyer Michael Cohen and adult film actor Stormy Daniels — on his social media platform, despite a gag order barring him from attacking witnesses and the jury. Merchan fined Trump $1,000 on Monday morning, finding that he’d violated the April 1 gag order a 10th time.
Trump’s legal team has the prosecution’s witness list, but it hasn’t been made public. Cohen and Daniels are both expected to testify at some point.
It’s unclear whether Trump or other defense witnesses will take the stand.
In testimony Monday, former Trump Organization executive Jeff McConney testified about instructions he said he received from then-chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg about a plan to reimburse Cohen for $130,000 in expenses. McConney said that he essentially doubled the amount Cohen was owed to help with his taxes and that the payments were listed as a $35,000-a-month “retainer” for his legal services.
Prosecutors said Cohen’s money went to Daniels to keep her quiet near the end of the 2016 presidential campaign about a sexual encounter she says she had with Trump in 2006. Trump denies her claim.
Deborah Tarasoff, an accounts payable supervisor and the first current Trump Organization employee to testify, was the person who cut the checks to Cohen. She said they were sent to Trump while he was president for his signature. The checks, which bore Trump’s distinctive Sharpie signature, were displayed for the jury Monday.
Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records related to the payment. He has pleaded not guilty.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
