“Polling the electorate,” indeed.
now we are back to the actual crime. chain of custody of the checks. from manochio in nyc to westerhout dc.
cnn update"
Trump organization Rebecca Manochio is testifying that Trump’s personal expenses were handled by the Trump Organization and he paid his expenses by check.
Bookeeper Rebecca Manochio is testifying that she often sent 10 to 20 checks at a time.
Manochio says she sent the checks unsigned and they came back from Washington signed by Donald Trump, typically within a few days.
The checks were sent back to her at the Trump Organization, Manochio says.
If she didn’t get a check back, Manochio said she would reach out to Madeline Westerhout at the White House. “She would just look for it and see if she had it,” Manochio says of Westerhout when a check was missing.
When the signed checks came back to her, the backup invoices were still attached to them, she says.
she would them give the to deb tarasoff who testified earlier.
Bookkeeper Rebecca Manochio is being used now to get Trump Organization emails and FedEx invoices into evidence.
The jury is currently being shown a FedEx invoice from May 29, 2017.
Manochio is listed as the sender of the invoice. Keith Schiller, who served as the Trump Organization’s director of security, is the recipient.
The checks were sent to Schiller’s home address in Washington, DC, the bookkeeper said.
It was sent with FedEx’s Priority Overnight service, as “always,” Manochio said.
Remember: Legal analysts have noted that issues of standard record-keeping are central to this case, so prosecutors will call some witnesses primarily to produce things like documents, ledgers and invoices.
cardigan:
Stormy Daniels has left the stand. Here’s what happened at the end of her testimony
Stormy Daniels was on the stand for 6 hours and 10 minutes over two days of testimony.
Prosecutor Susan Hoffinger began her redirect of Daniels and focused on the non-disclosure agreement, an Anderson Cooper interview and more. Trump attorney Susan Necheles returned to ask questions to close things out.
Here’s what the prosecution asked:
The NDA made her feel safer: Hoffinger went through Daniels’ motivation for entering into the non-disclosure agreement, including her fear for her safety. Daniels also recalled being told about being safer hiding in plain sight.
“Something won’t happen to you if everyone is looking at you,” Daniels said.
What she didn’t tell 60 Minutes: Hoffinger asked Daniels if she told “every single detail” to Anderson Cooper. Daniels said, “No.” After an objection and a sidebar, the line of questions continued.
“In terms of the context, you did tell Anderson Cooper that you had sex with Mr. Trump?”
Daniels agreed.
The social post’s aim: Daniels said she thought Trump’s Truth Social post was aimed at her. “If you go after me, I’m coming after you,” it reads. She said she thought it was about her, as it was right after Trump filed a lawsuit against her in Florida.
Telling the truth cost her: Prosecutor: While Daniels has made money with Trump story, it has also cost her, Hoffinger said. Daniels said now she’s had to hire security and move her daughter to a safe place to live, in addition to the money she owes Trump in attorneys fees.
Here’s what the defense asked:
Social media exchanges: Daniels defended herself when Trump attorney Susan Necheles asked about the back-and-forth exchanges with strangers on social media. “I was defending myself,” Daniels said.
“I never attack anybody first. Same with Mr. Trump. I didn’t say anything negative about him until he said it about me,” Daniels said.
Ok I missed this. Yeah that has Trump’s (teeny tiny ketchup coated) fingerprints all over it. No competent lawyer (or any rational person) is gonna try and say Trump didn’t sleep with her. Hell it doesn’t even really help his case he’s not being prosecuted for sleeping with her.
Its yet another case of Trump trying to trot out the playbook that’s worked for him over the year, dent delay and go on the attack. Even though it won’t help here.
This immediately came to mind for me as well.
Indeed
I’m not a trial atty, but I’d think that even in a boring financial records case, a jury might be curious about the high profile potential witness. So it was worthwhile putting her on the stand. Also provided a bit of a break in the tedium.
Thank you rocking chair for the updates. It sounds like Ms. Daniels did an impressive job, and that the defense’s questioning may have hurt them more than helped. Made the attempted slut shaming pretty obvious. In this day and age, I’d wonder how many jurors - male or female - would rely on that in the privacy of the jury room.
Seems like the same strategy Trump attempted (quite unsuccessfully) in the Carroll civil case.
Probably the defense team knows calling everybody you don’t like an opportunistic, mendacious grifter is not a great strategy, but it seems unlikely that message is getting through to their client.
Court is now in a lunch break for about an hour.
Cross-examination of bookkeeper Rebecca Manochio will start after lunch.
One of Donald Trump’s attorneys, Todd Blanche, is raising three issues with the judge:
- renewed motion for a mistrial
- to preclude Karen McDougal from testifying
- an issue having to do with the gag order related to Stormy Daniels.
Judge Juan Merchan says the trial will break at 4 p.m. ET, and they will take it up then after the jury leaves.
lawrence odonnell said the jury did not take many notes during the multi hour testimony of stormy daniels.
he goes on to say that voices never got raised. he characterized it as dinner table tones.
That suggests to me that they didn’t care about the particulars of her story, which is good. The details aren’t important despite the defense nitpicking them. What matters is if she is believable. And it leads credence to the allegation that Trump wanted this covered up to help his election, if the event happened as Stormy claims.
If the jury was taking notes then they probably were focusing on the wrong things and might go back to the jury room to discuss the holes in her story that the defense were trying to emphasize. But they didn’t so it sounds like the defense just wasted their time and did themselves no favors.
Just complete speculation on my part.
I think they are going for a variation of the Chewbacca defense. If the sex never happened then the payments were based on a lie, and if they they were based on lie then they weren’t real, and if they weren’t real then how can you convict Donald Trump for them? Logically its nonsensical, but planting the idea that the whole series of events that led to the indictment started with a made up event, might give some of the jurors the impression that the whole thing was a lie. Or at least that is their hope. Of course as others have said the primary point of attacking and slut shaming Daniels is that its what Trump wants. The cruelty is the point.
As for what the prosecution gets out of Daniels testimony, its evidence that prior to the election Trump didn’t appear to care very much about keeping his affair secret. He didn’t tell her to make sure to keep it secret, they contacted eachother multiple times, and met multiple times in public. If Trump was dreadfully concerned about the harm this would do to his family if the story got out, you think he would hav been more careful at the outset.
Were I the judge, I’d be inclined to grant this. Stormy took us pretty fair afield from the elements of the crime. McDougal (who’s payoff wasn’t covered up with falsified business records) is even more attenuated.
The cross of Daniels did Donald’s defense no favors, in my opinion. As others have said, it was a performance to placate their client. In my opinion, a more effective cross would have focused on who Daniels dealt with, and who she did not, with regard to the payoff. Specifically, I’d be trying to frame this as the payoff didn’t come from donald, and she had no particular knowledge that he ever knew about or authorized it.
on msnbc, lawrence odonnell, lisa rubin, sue craig, and harry litman shared their courtroom/overflow room experience.
interesting, lawrence did not mentioned the slut shaming, but sue and lisa were really hot about it. they were in the overflow room and there were times in that room would “ooooh, at an answer to nechelas”. which makes me think it will break along gender lines in the jury.
they also mentioned when daniels would ask necheles for “cites!” for things necheles said were quotes of daniels, often necheles was shown to misrepresent the quote.
whoa, that is really bad and would further hurt the defence. harry also felt that the defence asked questions that they did not know the answer, or full answer. a big trial no-no.
lisa rubin mentioned that a sex worker does not walk around with a “consent to anyone, for anything” sign on.
harry did mention the slut shaming in his eyes hurt the defence team.
I wonder. Trump’s whole thing has been that this a witch hunt, and always has been. I’m wondering if they’re trying to cast the whole prosecution as a bunch of unrelated things that happened, tied together in a false narrative held together by lies and coercion, driven by Biden’s need to eliminate Trump as a rival.
Trump never had sex with this woman.
But she did lie, and try to make money off a fake story about Trump.
That disreputable idiot Cohen heard about this, and fell for her lies. He paid her off, all on his own, because he’s an idiot.
Completely unrelated to that, Trump paid Cohen over $400K in legal fees, because even though he’s an idiot, Cohen is actually Trump’s lawyer.
The prosecution convinced that idiot liar Cohen to lie on the stand about everything. Everything they’ve heard about Trump being in the loop on these payments is a lie, told by an idiot.
Of course there’s a paper trail, as proven by Trump’s own employees, because he was paying perfectly legitimate legal fees. Their testimony has been deliberately misrepresented by the corrupt prosecution, and the witnesses are being coerced into not saying so.
It’s all just a made up game connecting unconnected dots to draw a false narrative. This is proven, because the underlying accusation of Trump banging a porn star is untrue! Why would Trump pay off someone he never banged?
Boom! Not Guilty!
Yeah, that is bad. When you have to play these games, it really emphasizes how weak your position is.
per cnn update:
Rebecca Manochio, a bookkeeper who works at Trump Organization, is testifying about how she handled Donald Trump’s personal checks through the organization and how the process worked. She was on the stand until a court lunch break.
Here are the highlights so far:
Who is she? Trump Organization junior bookkeeper Manochio says she has worked at the company for 11 years. “I worked at a supermarket and then I got a job at the Trump Organization” in 2013, she said
Her responsibilities: Manochio said she worked as an assistant to former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg for eight years and sat outside his office. She said she attached invoices to checks for Weisselberg to sign. She also worked for former executive Jeffrey McConney, who was controller at the time — he already testified about how Michael Cohen’s payments were listed in Trump’s financial documents.
How Trump paid personal expenses: Trump’s personal expenses were handled by the Trump Organization, and he paid his expenses by check. When Trump was in the White House, Manochio says she would FedEx checks to Trump once a week.
Sending the checks to the White House: Manochio testified that she often sent 10 to 20 unsigned checks to Washington and they came back signed by Trump, typically in a few days. If a check was missing, she would as if Madeline Westerhout at the White House if she had it. When the checks came back to Manochio with the backup invoices attached, she would send them to Deborah Tarasoff in the organization’s accounting department, she said.
Getting emails and invoices into evidence: The prosecution is using this bookkeeper’s testimony to get emails and invoices into evidence, focusing on a series of correspondence regarding Trump’s personal checks from 2017. Several invoices show packages shipped from Manochio to Keith Schiller, the Trump Organization’s former head of security.
Why it matters: The documents outline how Trump’s personal checks were dealt with around the time of the hush money payments. Documents show they were facilitated in Washington, DC, by the bodyguard Schiller and then by the personal aide John McEntee, once Schiller left.
Donald Trump is back in the courtroom. He didn’t speak on his way in but did a fist pump.
The former president is scanning the rows. He just met the eye of two sketch artists and smiled in their direction.
Trump is also holding a large stack of articles, and he showed them to his attorneys as they wait for the jury to enter.
Trump’s legal team is all smiles.
Prosecutors are also back. They’re entering the courtroom.
Judge Juan Merchan is on the bench.
jury is re-entering.
Donald Trump’s attorney Susan Necheles is at the podium to begin cross-examination of Trump Organization bookkeeper Rebecca Manochio.
Under cross-examination, bookkeeper Rebecca Manochio confirms her understanding that Donald Trump is the only person who could sign his personal checks.
She says no business expenses were sent to him the same way.
Attorney Susan Necheles asks whether “it was all the checks for all of his personal expenses” sent to Trump. “Correct,” Manochio says.
“It was no business expenses that were being sent to him?” Necheles asks. “Correct,” she said.
"These were all personal bills that had to be paid promptly, right?” Necheles asks. “Yes,” Manochio says.
Rebecca Manochio, a junior bookkeeper at the Trump Organization, is testifying about how Trump had personal expense checks sent to him in Washington, DC, when he was president.
Similarly, Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump also had her personal expense checks sent down to DC for her to sign while she was involved in the White House before they were sent back, Manochio confirms.
Rebecca Manochio, a junior bookkeeper at the Trump Organization, is done testifying after a brief period of cross-examination from the defense.
The prosecution used Manochio to submit invoices, documents and emails as evidence.
Trump appeared to smile at Manochio as she walked past him out of the courtroom.
She testified for about 35 minutes.
Tracey Menzies, who works at Harper Collins, is the next witness.
She is the senior vice president of production and creative operations.
She has a book with her on the witness stand.
Menzies is testifying as a custodian of records for Harper Collins which was subpoenaed.
Except they have a perfectly good defense strategy they don’t need a Chewbacca defense. The argument that he did pay her and falsify the records, but only as a private individual who didn’t want his family to find out about it is a fairly solid one. It at least stands a chance.
This “deny everything” is coming from Trump IMO
Though IANAL. Generally how bad an idea is it for the defense to posit multiple contradictory reasons that their client is innocent? That he didn’t have sex with her, and didn’t falsify records, and only falsified record so he didn’t hurt his family cannot possibly all be true, but would it hurt the defense case to suggest all three?
I’m not a lawyer either, but this is a common Trump strategy. We saw it with the Mar-a-Lago document case where Trump started by saying he didn’t have the documents, then he said he turned in all the documents they asked for, that the documents were planted by the FBI, and eventually that he had a right to the documents (that he originally said he didn’t have). He’s like a child who keeps coming up with excuse after excuse when he sees his audience isn’t buying it.