The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s hush money trial has warned prosecutors to get their star witness, former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, to stop his taunting posts and jabs at the former US president.
Judge Juan M Merchan’s comments came as a dramatic and consequential week in the first criminal trial of a former American president drew to a close on Friday.
Prosecutors have been building up their case ahead of crucial evidence from Mr Cohen, who arranged the $130,000 payout to adult film actor Stormy Daniels to keep her from going public ahead of the 2016 election about an alleged sexual encounter with Trump a decade earlier.
Trump denies ever having sex with Ms Daniels.
Defence lawyers will argue that the disbarred lawyer who served prison time is out to get the former president and cannot be believed.
Two people familiar with the matter told The Associated Press that Mr Cohen is expected to go into the witness box on Monday.
Trump’s lawyers complained after Mr Cohen this week wore a shirt featuring a figure resembling the former president behind bars in a social media video.
They have argued it is unfair Trump is under a gag order that prevents him from speaking publicly about witnesses while Mr Cohen has continued to post about Trump on social media.
“It’s becoming a problem every single day that President Trump is not allowed to respond to this witness but this witness is allowed to continue to talk,” defence lawyer Todd Blanche said.
Judge Merchan told prosecutors they should inform Mr Cohen “that the judge is asking him to refrain from making any more statements” about the case or about Trump.
Prosecutors told the judge they had already requested that Mr Cohen and other witnesses not talk about the case, but had no direct means of controlling their behaviour.
As the third week of evidence wrapped up on Friday, the case that ultimately hinges on record-keeping returned to deeply technical testimony – a sharp contrast from Ms Daniels’ dramatic, if not downright seamy, account of the alleged sexual encounter with Trump that riveted jurors earlier this week.
Jurors saw social media posts showing that Trump initially praised Mr Cohen after the then-lawyer came under federal investigation.
Trump started bashing him after Mr Cohen pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations, along with other crimes, and claimed Trump directed him to arrange the payment for Ms Daniels.
Trump was never charged with any crime related to that federal investigation.
Trump, who was visibly angry during much of Ms Daniels’ evidence, chatted frequently with his lawyers and read through a stack of papers on the table in front of him as jurors heard from witnesses including AT&T and Verizon workers, who authenticated phone records.
Leaving the courthouse, Trump addressed the allegation at the heart of the case: that he falsified his company’s records to conceal the nature of hush money reimbursements to Mr Cohen.
“A very good bookkeeper marked a legal expense as a legal expense,” Trump said.
“He was a lawyer, not a fixer,” he added, referring to Mr Cohen.
Friday’s dry evidence appeared to test jurors’ patience at times.
One juror stifled a yawn while another stretched out his arm, and others shifted their gaze around the room or stared up at the ceiling.
In one of the livelier moments, Trump lawyer Emil Bove asked a paralegal about the “tedious” work of going through lengthy phone, data and other records and preparing charts from them.
“Actually, I kind of enjoyed it,” the paralegal said matter-of-factly, to chuckles from the courtroom audience.
“Respect,” Mr Bove replied.
Witnesses in the case have seesawed between bookkeepers and bankers with evidence about records and finances, to Ms Daniels and others with unflattering stories about Trump and the tabloid world machinations meant to keep them secret.
Despite all the drama, in the end, the trial is about money changing hands – business transactions – and whether those payments were made to illegally influence the 2016 election.
Ms Daniels’ story of an alleged sexual encounter with Trump was a crucial building block for prosecutors, who are seeking to show that the Republican and his allies buried unflattering stories in the waning weeks of the 2016 presidential election in an effort to illegally influence the race.
Trump walked out of the court in a rage on Thursday, angrily telling reporters: “I’m innocent.”
His lawyers pushed for a mistrial over the level of tawdry details Ms Daniels went into in the witness box, but Judge Juan M Merchan denied the request.
Back in the witness box on Friday morning was Madeleine Westerhout, a former Trump White House aide.
Prosecutors used Ms Westerhout’s evidence to detail the process by which Trump got personal mail – including cheques to sign – while in the White House.
It is relevant because that is how he received and signed the cheques that reimbursed Mr Cohen for the payment to Ms Daniels, prosecutors say.
Ms Westerhout said that Trump was “very upset” when The Wall Street Journal published a 2018 story about the hush money deal with Ms Daniels.
“My understanding was that he knew it would be hurtful to his family,” Ms Westerhout said, though she acknowledged she did not recall him saying so specifically.
The answer, elicited by Trump lawyer Susan Necheles, goes to the defence’s argument that Ms Daniels was paid to stay silent in order to protect Trump’s family, not his campaign.
Over more than seven-and-a-half hours of evidence, Ms Daniels relayed in graphic detail what she says happened after the two met at a celebrity golf outing at Lake Tahoe where sponsors included the adult film studio where she worked.
Ms Daniels explained how she felt surprise, fear and discomfort, even as she consented to sex with Trump.
During combative cross-examination, Trump’s lawyers sought to paint Ms Daniels as a liar and extortionist who is trying to take down the former president after drawing money and fame from her claims.
Ms Necheles pressed Ms Daniels on why she accepted the payout to keep quiet instead of going public, and the two women traded barbs over what Ms Necheles said were inconsistencies in Ms Daniels’ story over the years.
“You made all this up, right?” Ms Necheles asked Ms Daniels.
“No,” Ms Daniels shot back.
After Ms Daniels stepped down from the witness box on Thursday, Trump’s lawyers pressed the judge to amend the gag order that prevents him from talking about witnesses in the case so he could publicly respond to what she told jurors.
The judge denied that request too.
Trump on Friday also lost a bid to get records from Mark Pomerantz, a former Manhattan prosecutor who authored a book last year detailing tensions with district attorney Alvin Bragg over whether to seek Trump’s indictment.
Prosecutors in Mr Bragg’s office asked Judge Merchan to reject the subpoena of Mr Pomerantz, and the judge agreed, writing in an order that the defence requests are either overly broad and part of a “fishing expedition” or they seek information that is irrelevant to the case.
Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsifying internal Trump Organisation business records.
The charges stem from paperwork such as invoices and cheques that were deemed legal expenses in company records.
Prosecutors say those payments largely were reimbursements to Mr Cohen for Ms Daniels’ hush money payment.
This criminal case could be the only one of four against the presumptive Republican presidential nominee to go to trial before voters decide in November whether to send him back to the White House.
Trump has pleaded not guilty and casts himself as the victim of a politically tainted justice system working to deny him another term.
Meanwhile, as the threat of jail looms over Trump following repeated gag order violations, his lawyers are fighting the judge’s order and seeking a fast decision in an appeals court.
If that court refuses to lift the gag order, Trump’s lawyers want permission to take their appeal to the state’s high court.
