Trump Trial Adjourns Until Tuesday (2024)

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Five takeaways from the second week of Donald J. Trump’s criminal trial.

His testimony also teed up the story of Stormy Daniels, a p*rn star who claims to have had sex with Mr. Trump in 2006 and received a hush-money payment in the days before the 2016 election, a deal at the center of the case.

Mr. Trump is charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in an effort to conceal the payment. If convicted, he could face four years in prison. Mr. Trump has pleaded not guilty and denied that he had sex with Ms. Daniels.

The week also brought more accusations that Mr. Trump had violated a gag order prohibiting him from attacking witnesses, prosecutors and jurors. Justice Juan M. Merchan has not ruled on the prosecution’s request to hold Mr. Trump in contempt, and said he would hold another hearing next Thursday to address allegations of new violations.

Here’s what happened during the second week, and eighth day, of Mr. Trump’s trial:

Opening statements displayed dueling strategies.

Prosecutors and defense lawyers presented dueling portraits of Mr. Trump’s actions.

Prosecutors sketched a secret scheme to influence the 2016 election. They said Mr. Trump directed men in his inner circle to suppress negative stories about him and then agreed to cover up the payment to Ms. Daniels after taking the White House.

But Mr. Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanche said his client’s actions were “run-of-the-mill” business. Nondisclosure agreements are common among the wealthy and famous, he said, and influencing an election is no crime. “It’s called democracy,” Mr. Blanche said.

Mr. Blanche also attacked potential prosecution witnesses. He called Mr. Cohen, who spent time in prison on charges stemming from the matter, a criminal who “can’t be trusted.” He said Stormy Daniels was “biased” and had profited from her story.

A former tabloid titan opened the case.

Mr. Pecker testified that he was the “eyes and ears” of the Trump campaign, keeping a lookout for unflattering stories.

He detailed a deal with a former doorman of a Manhattan building managed by the Trump Organization who said that Mr. Trump had fathered a child out of wedlock. Despite the story being false, Mr. Pecker said the tabloid paid him $30,000 to prevent embarrassment.

Mr. Pecker also spoke about a deal with Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump, an allegation that he denies. Ms. McDougal was paid $150,000, but Mr. Pecker said he had no intention of publishing anything about the affair.

After two payouts, Mr. Pecker said he had been unwilling to buy a third story: Ms. Daniels’s account of a sexual encounter with Mr. Trump.

How the tabloid sausage was made.

During their cross-examination of Mr. Pecker, Mr. Trump’s lawyers set out to show that such deals were “standard operating procedure” in the tabloid business, and that only about half of all stories purchased made it to print.

One of the defendant’s lawyers, Emil Bove, pushed Mr. Pecker about the real purpose of the deal with Ms. McDougal, whether her top priority was money and whether the agreement had other benefits for her. Mr. Pecker conceded that dozens of articles were published under her name.

But Mr. Pecker later testified that the agreement’s real purpose had been to bury the story of the affair.

Trump continued to speak out.

Mr. Trump has been subdued compared with his appearances at civil trials in Manhattan, where he was known to mutter loudly and twice stormed out.

But occasionally his frustration was apparent. He once shook his head vigorously as Mr. Pecker testified.

When he left the courtroom, Mr. Trump lashed out at the case against him, veering into territory potentially prohibited by Justice Merchan’s gag order.

Next week may offer more drama, if fewer days.

Friday ended with few fireworks. Mr. Trump’s former executive assistant, Rhona Graff, testified briefly, identifying entries from the Trump Organization’s computer system that contained contact information for Ms. McDougal and Ms. Daniels.

Prosecutors also called Gary Farro, a banker who helped Mr. Cohen open an account that he used for the $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels. Mr. Farro’s testimony is expected to continue next week.

It is not clear who will testify after Mr. Farro, but the weeks ahead could include Mr. Cohen, Ms. Daniels and Hope Hicks, Mr. Trump’s former White House communications director.

Monday is an off day for the court, as is Wednesday. Mr. Trump will use the midweek break to campaign in Wisconsin and Michigan, two battleground states in this year’s election. He is the presumptive Republican nominee.

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Here’s what we know about Gary Farro, the third witness.

Mr. Cohen set up the account in October 2016 and funded it from his home equity line of credit at First Republic. He has previously said he did so to ensure his wife would not know about the transaction. About two weeks before the 2016 presidential election, he wired the payment to Keith Davidson, a lawyer for Ms. Daniels.

After the hush-money payment became public, Ms. Daniels’s lawyer at the time, Michael Avenatti, provided NBC News with an email from an assistant to Mr. Farro confirming the transfer. Mr. Cohen had used his Trump Organization email address in the communications, but said at the time that company funds were not used.

According to NBC, the email, from Oct. 26, 2016, had the subject line, “First Republic Bank Transfer” and confirmed that “the funds have been deposited into your checking account.”

Mr. Trump has denied having had sex with Ms. Daniels.

For those familiar with Cohen, Farro is making a number of telling statements. He says that he was thought of as someone who was good at working with “individuals who may be a little challenging,” though he says he didn’t find Cohen “difficult.” He also comments on Cohen’s apparent excitement to be working for Trump.

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Farro was a banker at First Republic when Michael Cohen was seeking to arrange the $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels. Cohen, seeking to get the money together, was contacted by Farro’s assistant at First Republic Bank.

Prosecutors forgot something very important — the jury. They will have to call Farro again once the jurors enter. It’s Friday afternoon, all right.

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Trump cracks a small smile as Graff speaks glowingly of her time working for Trump. She says she never had the same day twice and called Trump “fair” as a boss.

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Who is Rhona Graff, Trump’s former assistant who is testifying against him?

“Everybody knows in order to get through to him,” she once said, “they have to go through me.”

Prosecutors on Friday spent about 15 minutes questioning Ms. Graff before Mr. Trump’s legal team started cross-examination, which also was short.

Asked about her role at the Trump Organization, Ms. Graff told prosecutors that she compiled records that included emails, contact lists and calendar entries. She said the company’s directory had contact information for Karen McDougal and a “Stormy.”

Ms. McDougal is a former Playboy model who has claimed to have had sex with Mr. Trump. Stormy appears to be a reference to Stormy Daniels, who has also claimed to have had an affair and whose hush-money payment is central to the criminal case against Mr. Trump.

Ms. Graff testified that, even though she left the Trump Organization and was testifying in the trial, the organization was paying her legal fees.

Under questioning by a Trump lawyer, she spoke glowingly about her time working for the former president, calling him “fair” as a boss — eliciting a smile from Mr. Trump in the courtroom. She also spoke fondly about Mr. Trump’s reality show “The Apprentice,” adding that it helped him achieve “rock-star status.”

Ms. Graff heard about a job opening in 1987 at the Trump Organization and cold-called to get the position. The job appeared to raise her profile. Six years later, Ms. Graff’s wedding announcement was published in The New York Times. She married Lucius Joseph Riccio, the city’s commissioner of transportation, in a wedding officiated by Mayor David N. Dinkins.

The roles in which she served for Mr. Trump extended far beyond being his assistant, as reflected in her title: senior vice president. She acted as Mr. Trump’s media liaison, scheduler, sometimes spokeswoman, fund-raising planner, co-star on “The Apprentice” and as a Miss Teen USA judge.

Ms. Graff continued her service during his 2016 presidential campaign and after Mr. Trump moved into the White House.

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Trump’s trial is the latest chapter in the rich history of Lower Manhattan’s courts.

But just down the street on Foley Square sits Manhattan’s most elegant courthouse building, New York’s Supreme Court, with its sweeping flight of 32 stone steps leading up to a series of imposing Corinthian columns. Other court buildings are dotted around nearby.

“The eyes of the nation and the world are trained on criminal court cases in New York County, whether it’s organized crime, Wall Street cases or federal cases,” Mr. Pigott said.

Mr. Trump’s trial is remarkable because it is the first time that a former American president has been criminally prosecuted. The defendant’s status as this year’s presumptive Republican presidential nominee adds a contemporary political dimension.

For Mr. Pigott, 64, who has written a book about the history of the city’s courthouses, the real significance is what it says about the status of a few blocks of Manhattan as a nexus. He pointed out that Mr. Trump’s civil fraud case and defamation case also both played out this year in courthouses within spitting distance of the criminal trial.

“Now, when I arrive at the expanse of Foley Square midway through the walk, I can point to something truly remarkable — three different courthouses where the same former U.S. president has been on trial,” he said.

Mr. Trump’s trial shows how politics, celebrity and the location of the court itself can reinforce one another to make a big story bigger. New York’s status as a media hub increases the spotlight during high-profile cases and the high-profile cases held over the decades have, in turn, made the city’s courts an attractive setting for fictional courtroom dramas.

In these buildings, a jury convicted Anna Sorokin for grand larceny in 2019 for posing as a German heiress to swindle wealthy New Yorkers — a case that almost by definition blurred fact and fiction. Naturally, the tale has since been turned into a series on Netflix.

The cluster is also where a group of Black and Latino teenagers, then known as the Central Park Five, were wrongly convicted in 1990 of raping a jogger — a case also rendered as a Netflix series — and where Mark David Chapman pleaded guilty in 1981 to murdering the musician John Lennon.

The New York Supreme Court building, a trial-level court, often serves as a symbol of the court complex. It featured prominently in the television show “Law and Order" and the 1957 courtroom film classic “12 Angry Men,” to cite just two examples.

Mr. Pigott, however, is drawn to the history of the legal system before the 20th century and how it evolved through its buildings. The first stop on the tours he runs is a sidewalk nearby with glass blocks embedded in it, through which it is possible to see the excavations of a courthouse built by the Dutch in the colonial era.

The authorities in New York built a judicial infrastructure in this part of Lower Manhattan starting mainly in the 19th century, when the area experienced significant gang violence, he said.

“This one-block radius has been the epicenter of criminal justice in New York since the 1830s,” said Mr. Pigott.

For all the drama associated with the Trump trial, the streets outside the criminal courthouse have generally been calm this week. Reporters and members of the public have lined up for entry to the courthouse. And on Thursday morning, Collect Pond Park across the street, which has been designated for protests, was empty. Its only occupants were some police officers and a few pigeons.

On stand, Pecker fires back after Trump lawyer implies he was untruthful.

For most of Friday, Mr. Bove had struck a polite tone with Mr. Pecker, spending most of the second day of cross-examination focusing on arcane questions about deals to suppress stories, including one with Karen McDougal, the former Playboy model who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump.

But as Mr. Bove wrapped up his cross-examination, he asked Mr. Pecker about his obligations in cooperating with the prosecution in the hush-money trial.

Mr. Pecker did not play along. “To be truthful,” he fired back, adding: “I’ve been truthful to the best of my recollection.”

And with that, Mr. Bove sat down.

Mr. Pecker was the first witness called by prosecutors. Their questions over three days sought to establish that he and his publication suppressed negative stories about Mr. Trump while both promoting him in The Enquirer and attacking his Republican primary rivals.

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