Michael Cohen hands over cell phone in investigation of Trump and Stormy Daniels

Donald Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, has turned over his cellphone to Manhattan prosecutors investigating the $130,000 cash payments to Stormy Daniels.

The repairman revealed his cooperation to CNN on Wednesday in the investigation into an attempt to prevent the porn star from going public with her relationship with the former president ahead of the 2016 election.

Trump denied the relationship again this week, calling Daniels “horseface” when a grand jury was convened to hear evidence.

“Most recently, they asked for my cell phones because they want to be able to extract from them the voice recordings I had with Keith Davidson, a former attorney for Stormy Daniels before Michael Avenatti, as well as a bunch of emails, text messages. and so on,’ Cohen told Don Lemon after meeting with prosecutors earlier this month.

Cohen pleaded guilty to federal campaign finance charges and received three years in prison in 2018 for facilitating the $130,000 payment to Daniels.

He spent most of his sentence in home confinement in his Manhattan apartment.

Federal prosecutors said the Trump Organization paid him $420,000 to cover his original pay and tax liabilities, and rewarded him with a bonus.

He also responded to video of his former boss advocating for La Quinta 400 times over four hours in a deposition before New York Attorney General Letitia James.

“Donald can’t keep track of the lies he tells, so what better way to prevent a fool from being deposed and getting more hurt than by telling him to plead for Fifth at least 400 times,” he added.

On Tuesday night, Daniels hit back at Trump after he went on a tirade on Truth Social about the alleged payments.

Daniels claims to have slept with Trump in 2006, but the former president denied the allegations on his Truth Social app on Monday.

A grand jury will hear testimony this week about the former president’s role in the payment made to keep Daniels quiet during his 2016 campaign, the New York Times reported.

The porn star responded to Trump’s rant on Twitter, stating, “He opens his mouth wider than I open my legs.”

“Thank you for admitting that I was telling the truth about EVERYTHING,” Daniels wrote. Guess I’ll take my “horse face” to bed now, Mr. Ex-“President.”

Daniels claims that she slept with Trump while he was married to former first lady Melania Trump, who had given birth to their son Barron less than six months before their brief affair.

He said the president paid him $130,000 to shut up.

Trump criticized Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg as a “radical” prosecutor.

He also accused Bragg of spending more time investigating him than pursuing crime in New York City, and claims the Democrat leaked the grand jury report to the press.

“With murder and violent crime on the rise like never before in New York City, Manhattan’s radical left District Attorney Alvin Bragg has just leaked to the fake news media that they are still going after Stormy ‘Horseface. ‘ Daniels,” Trump wrote Monday afternoon. .

“Working closely with the Armed Department of Justice, this is a continuation of the Greatest Witch Hunt of all time. They missed the Statute of Limitations a long time ago, and I recently won a lot of money against “Stormy” in the 9th Circuit – NEVER HAD AN AFFAIR. This is old news!

His “big money” line is likely referring to a judge who recently ordered Daniels to pay nearly $300,000 into Trump’s legal sensation after her lawsuit against him failed. She had sued him for libel for his denials of his alleged affair.

Daniels added Tuesday: ‘I like the sex. He likes to lie. Sounds like a perfect analogy to me.

The case could lead to criminal charges.

Trump’s former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, previously admitted paying Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, to keep quiet about the alleged affair.

Cohen pleaded guilty to violating campaign finance law in 2018 and was sentenced to three years in prison for arranging the payment and a confidentiality agreement.

He told a judge at the time that they were done “in coordination with and under the direction of a candidate for federal office.”

Now, with Trump several years out of office and running another campaign, witnesses are set to begin speaking before the New York City grand jury as prosecutors explain why the former president should be indicted.

On Monday, among the witnesses who arrived at the Manhattan court proceedings was David Pecker, a former editor for the National Enquirer.

He previously admitted to prosecutors that he worked “in concert” with the 2016 Trump campaign to arrange secret payments for Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal.

A statement from the Manhattan prosecutor’s office at the time said it helped facilitate the payments so the women “wouldn’t publish prejudicial allegations” about Trump.

Other expected witnesses include former National Enquirer editor Dylan Howard and two Trump Organization employees, according to The Times.

It was revealed late last week that federal prosecutors had discussed charging Trump with campaign finance violations over payments to Daniels and McDougal after he left office.

While Justice Department guidance warned against impeaching a sitting president, there were talks about whether to use evidence collected from Cohen’s 2018 prosecution to go after Trump when his term ended, according to CNN analyst Elie Honig’s book Untouchable. .

But that was apparently derailed by the chaos that month, including the riots at the US Capitol on January 6 and Trump’s efforts to nullify the 2020 presidential election.

Honig wrote that such national crises made alleged campaign financial shortfalls “seem somehow trivial and stale by comparison.”