NEW YORK — The events at the center of former President Donald Trump’s hush money case date back nearly two decades, with new dates coming to light as the trial plays out in a Manhattan courtroom. Here are the key moments in the case, as described in witness statements and court documents:
January 2005: Trump marries his current wife Melania.
September 2005: Trump is recorded bragging to Access Hollywood host Billy Bush about grabbing women’s genitals without asking for consent. The images will not be broadcast and will not be made public until October 2016.
June 2006: Former Playboy model Karen McDougal says this is when she first met Trump, after “The Apprentice” was filmed at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles. McDougal has claimed they had a 10-month affair that ended in 2007, a claim Trump denies.
July 2006: Porn actor Stormy Daniels and Trump meet at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe. Daniels claims they had a sexual encounter, Trump denies the claim.
May 2011: Daniels shares her claim about the encounter in an interview with In Touch magazine, but the story is not published at the time. In October, Trump fixer Michael Cohen sent an email to the publication’s general counsel saying Trump would aggressively pursue legal action if the story were published. It won’t run until 2018.
June 16, 2015: Trump announces he will seek the Republican nomination for president.
August 2015: Trump and Cohen meet at Trump Tower with David Pecker, then CEO of National Enquirer publisher American Media Inc, also known as AMI. According to Pecker’s testimony, he says at the meeting that he will act as the “eyes and ears” of the campaign, notifying Cohen of claims about Trump so that the rights can be purchased and the stories destroyed.
October 2015: Pecker discovers that a former Trump Tower doorman, Dino Sajudin, is trying to sell a story that Trump had fathered a child with an employee.
November 15, 2015: The National Enquirer pays Sajudin $30,000 for the rights to the rumor. The tabloid concludes that the story was untrue. The woman and Trump have denied the allegations.
July 19, 2016: Trump officially becomes the Republican presidential nominee at the party convention.
August 5, 2016: AMI buys McDougal’s story about the affair she claims she had with Trump in 2006 and 2007. The company pays her $150,000, agrees to feature her on two magazine covers and publish 100 magazine articles authored by her written.
September 6, 2016: Cohen records himself informing Trump of plan to buy McDougal’s story from AMI. Cohen says on the tape that he has already talked to Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg about “how to set up the whole thing.”
September 30, 2016: Cohen signs an agreement to purchase the non-disclosure portion of McDougal’s contract for $125,000 through a company called Resolution Consultants LLC.
Early October 2016: Pecker tells Cohen that the deal to buy McDougal’s secrecy is off. Cohen never pays the $125,000. “I told him that the agreement, the assignment agreement, will not go through. I’m not moving forward,” Pecker testified.
October 7, 2016: The Washington Post publishes the 2005 tape ‘Access Hollywood’.
October 8, 2016: Daniels’ rep tells the National Enquirer she is willing to make statements confirming a sexual encounter with Trump. Pecker and Howard put Cohen in touch with her attorney, Keith Davidson. In the coming days, Cohen will negotiate a $130,000 deal to acquire the rights to Daniels’ story and keep her quiet.
October 27, 2016: Cohen wires the payment to Davidson’s law firm through a shell company, Essential Consultants LLC. The next day, Daniels signs a confidential settlement and non-disclosure agreement. The agreement uses the pseudonyms Peggy Peterson for Daniels and David Dennison for Trump.
November 4, 2016: The Wall Street Journal publishes a story revealing McDougal’s deal with Enquirer’s parent company, AMI. The story also mentions Daniels, saying she had been in talks with a TV network to tell her story but had broken off negotiations. Trump campaign spokesperson Hope Hicks denies that Trump had a relationship with either woman and says of the McDougal deal: “We have no knowledge of this.”
November 9, 2016: Trump is elected president.
January 20, 2017: Trump is sworn in as president.
January 2017: Cohen seeks reimbursement from the Trump Organization for his $130,000 payment to Daniels, as well as an additional $50,000 for unrelated campaign “technical services.” Cohen provided company executives with a copy of a bank statement showing the transfer to Davidson.
Jeffrey McConney, former controller of the Trump Organization, testified in court and recalled a meeting with the company’s longtime Chief Financial Officer, Allen Weisselberg, who devises a plan to pay Cohen the money he is owed, with a bonus of $60,000 and additional money to cover the taxes he must pay. owed by reporting the money as income, totaling $420,000.
January 27, 2017: Cohen’s last day as a full-time employee of the Trump Organization, according to McConney’s testimony. Cohen begins to introduce himself as Trump’s “personal lawyer.”
February 14, 2017: Cohen emails an invoice to McConney requesting payment “pursuant to the retainer agreement” for services performed for January and February 2017. The invoice requested payment of $35,000 for each of those two months – the first two monthly installments of his payment plan.
Weisselberg approves the payments and McConney sends the invoice to an accounts payable manager with the instructions: “Mail to legal fees. Put ‘retainer for the months of January and February 2017’ in the description.”
January 10, 2018: Daniels issues a statement saying that allegations that she had a “sexual and/or romantic affair” with Trump are “absolutely false” and that rumors that she received hush money from Trump are “completely false” .
January 12, 2018: The Wall Street Journal publicly announces Cohen’s payment to Daniels.
January 30, 2018: Daniels issues another statement denying that she had a sexual encounter with Trump.
February 13, 2018: Cohen tells The New York Times that he paid Daniels out of his own pocket.
April 5, 2018: Aboard Air Force One, an Associated Press reporter asks Trump, “Did you know about the $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels?” Trump answers: “No.”
April 9, 2018: Federal agents in New York raid Cohen’s office and a hotel room and seize records including the payment to Daniels. Trump says: “So I just heard they broke into the office of one of my personal lawyers – a good man.”
April 26, 2018: In a telephone interview with “Fox & Friends’ Trump acknowledges that Cohen represented him in the ‘crazy Stormy Daniels deal’.
May 2, 2018: Rudy Giuliani, who represents Trump as one of his lawyers, tells Fox News that Trump has reimbursed Cohen for the $130,000 paid to Daniels.
May 3, 2018: Trump tweets that Cohen received a monthly retainer — “not from the campaign and nothing to do with the campaign” — to enter into an NDA, which is “very common among celebrities and wealthy people.”
July 24, 2018: Cohen’s lawyer releases the September 2016 tape of Cohen talking to Trump about the payments.
August 21, 2018: Cohen pleads guilty in Manhattan federal court to campaign finance violations and other charges, including arranging hush money payments. During the hearing, he claims that Trump instructed him to arrange the payment. Trump has never been charged with any crimes related to the federal investigation. Cohen is later sentenced to three years in prison.
August 22, 2018: Trump tweets: “If anyone is looking for a good lawyer, I strongly advise you not to use the services of Michael Cohen!”
September 2018: AMI enters a non-prosecution agreement with Manhattan federal prosecutors in connection with the McDougal deal, court documents show.
August 1, 2019: The Trump Organization receives a grand jury subpoena from then-Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance, calling for records and communications related to the payments to Daniels and McDougal.
November 3, 2020: Trump faces Joe Biden in the presidential election and ultimately loses to the Democrat.
November 2, 2021: Alvin Bragg is elected Manhattan district attorney, succeeding fellow Democrat Vance and inheriting the Trump investigation.
January 23, 2023: Bragg empanels a new grand jury to hear evidence about Trump.
March 30, 2023: The grand jury indicts Trump on state charges that he falsified his company’s internal records to conceal the true nature of payments made to Cohen for helping cover up the alleged meetings. The indictment makes Trump the first former president to be charged with a crime.
April 4, 2023: Trump is indicted. He pleads not guilty and promises to fight the charges.
April 15, 2024: Trump goes on trial in Manhattan.