Read our ongoing coverage of Donald Trump’s first criminal trial here.
Though Tuesday is shaping up to be better, with Stormy Daniels testifying, Monday was the most boring day so far in People of New York v. Trump. A pair of accountants from the Trump Organization testified dryly about the company’s bookkeeping processes, also explaining each and every one of the 34 business documents that Trump is accused of falsifying. For the first time, multiple jurors appeared to lose focus, and the note-taking was far less copious than for more compelling witnesses, such as Hope Hicks, Keith Davidson, and David Pecker.
Although the testimony itself didn’t reveal much, beyond the handwritten notes that Trump Organization Controller Jeffrey McConney and Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg took describing Michael Cohen’s precise reimbursement plan for the Stormy Daniels payment, it showcased one thing: Donald Trump might not be in this mess if he wasn’t such a cheapskate micromanager.
Specifically, the company had a rule that Donald Trump, Eric Trump, or Donald Trump Jr. had to sign off on any payment more than $10,000, which is one reason Trump had to be involved in the Cohen reimbursement scheme in the first place. Those handwritten notes laid out that the Trump Organization was to pay Cohen $180,000 in reimbursements—$130,000 for the Stormy payment and $50,000 for another more legitimate reimbursement—then double it to “gross up” and “pay for taxes,” in addition to a $60,000 bonus for Cohen himself. That totaled $420,000, or $35,000 a month for 12 months of repayments, which were labeled in the Trump books as “legal expenses” based on a “retainer.” These are the allegedly false records. Prosecutors on Monday went through each individual one of those payments with both of the accountants. (As ever, Trump’s “beautiful blue eyes” were closed for most of the day.)
Trump’s third adult child, Eric Trump, in the audience that day, was possibly one of the most engaged observers, nodding along every time his name was mentioned. This went like so:
Prosecutors show email stating that an invoice was “OK to pay as per agreement with Don and Eric.”
Eric nods on the sidelines.
Prosecutors explain that payments needed a sign-off from Trump or “one of President Trump’s sons.”
Eric nods.
Prosecutor asks witness if they understood a reference to “two of the president’s sons” to mean “Don and Eric.”
Eric nods again.
Witness explains that invoices of a certain amount had to be paid by “Eric, Don Jr., or Mr. Trump.”
Eric nods yet again.
Eric also nodded, of course, when the prosecution presented a check he had personally signed to reimburse Cohen. (When Deborah Tarasoff, testifying to explain all the signatures on the various checks, walked to and from the witness stand, she seemed to ignore the defendant but gave Eric a warm, motherly smile and even patted his leg.) Eric did not nod when the names of his brother Donald Trump Jr. and his father were listed as check signers—it was just a personal thing.
In addition to having to sign off on each of those $35,000 payments, the former president also had to pay them through his own personal accounts that are managed through the Trump Organization, which led to him personally signing nine checks listed as “retainer” payments to Cohen. Those signatures tied him to the falsifying of the business records of which he is accused, making it much more difficult to argue—as his defense attorneys continue to attempt—that this was all formal accounting procedures in an elaborate family business with which he had nothing to do.
“As a practical matter, he would have had an easier time with plausible deniability if he didn’t micromanage and sign everything,” elections expert Richard Hasen told me.
He did, though. And although those extra payments to Cohen, specifically the “gross up” for his taxes and the bonus, may make him sound like a generous boss, much of the previous testimony vividly illustrates that Trump is a cheapskate. Prosecutors offered a series of exhibits on Tuesday demonstrating that signing every big check was standard practice for Trump, specifically excerpts from his books in which he bragged about his micromanagement and frugality. “Pennypinching, you bet, I’m all for it,” Trump wrote in Trump: Think Like a Billionaire, excerpts of which were read to the jury. “As I said before, I always sign my checks, so I know where my money is going.”
Let’s unravel this a bit further. First things first, if he hadn’t relied on outside actors to cover up his alleged peccadilloes by making the hush money payments—specifically AMI to pay Karen McDougal and Cohen to pay Daniels—and he had instead made those payments himself, this would have been a much different case, though the former president still could have been accused of failing to disclose his own campaign expenditures, Hasen told me.
But there also would have been far less of a paper trail had he just shelled out himself. This, however, is not the Trump way, as witness after witness has testified. Trump is a cheapskate who tries to get out of every payment he can. For instance, last week former Daniels attorney Davidson testified that he had had a conversation with Cohen in which the former Trump fixer complained that he had not been reimbursed by Trump as of Christmas 2016.
Davidson quoted Cohen as saying, during that conversation: “I’ve saved that guy’s ass so many times, you don’t even know. … That fucking guy’s not even paying me the $130,000 back.”
In fact, Trump’s frugality was what had forced Cohen into paying Stormy in the first place. At the start of the trial, Pecker testified that Trump never reimbursed AMI for the McDougal payment (and a second payment to a doorman who made a false allegation about Trump) either. And so, Trump may have assumed that he didn’t have to bother when it came time to pay for Daniels’ story.
By mid-October, when that deal had fallen apart, it looked as if ABC was going to run the Stormy story and everything was going to come out. National Enquirer editor Dylan Howard lamented this situation in a text to Davidson, declaring that it had gone awry “all because Trump is tight.”
“I reckon that Trump impersonator I hired has more cash,” Howard added, for good measure.
When asked about his understanding of what Howard meant by tight, Davidson responded, “That Mr. Trump was frugal.”
“They had this deal sort of on a silver platter and there for the taking and it didn’t close, and the only reason it didn’t close was because it didn’t fund, and the only reason that it didn’t fund was because they didn’t want to spend money,” Davidson testified.
When Stormy takes the stand today, it will be the ultimate example of Donald Trump’s cheapness coming home to roost.
