The key element of the Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's 34-count felony indictment of former President Donald Trump is that he had intimate knowledge of a hush money payment scheme to allegedly buy the silence of various women claiming to have had affairs with him. And Trump's defense is largely that the affairs never happened, the women in question were extorting him and that the payments were made without him having a hand in it. Trump's fate will ultimately depend on which narrative jurors believe.
However, a new report by the New York Times' Jonah E. Bromwich, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan suggests that jurors may not be convinced of Trump's alleged ignorance of the arrangement given his management style. During the trial, prosecutors have entered portions of Trump's own books into the official evidence record to make the argument that nothing is done within any of his business ventures without him at the helm.
"I always sign my checks, so I know where my money’s going," Trump wrote in one book, emphasizing that he was always "watching the bottom line."
"Every dollar counts in business, and for that matter, every dime," he added. "Penny pinching? You bet. I’m all for it."
While on the witness stand in the ex-president's trial proceedings, former Trump advisor Hope Hicks testified that even though the Trump Organization was a "very big and successful company," it was "really run like a small family business" due to virtually every facet being under Trump's direct oversight. The Times described several instances where Trump's pattern of micromanaging the minutiae of his employees' work was apparent, like telling a custodian at one of his casinos that he was using the wrong chemical to clean a floor.
Another example involved TV commercials Trump ran in opposition to a tunnel project in Atlantic City, New Jersey that was proposed by a rival casino. Former Trump Organization consultant Alan Marcus told the Times that Trump provided feedback on the ads themselves, and ordered to have them pulled when they didn't have the desired outcome with audiences.
"Everybody that works [at the Trump Organization]... in some sense reports to Mr. Trump," Hicks said on the stand.
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"We knew Trump so well, he didn’t have to say anything, we knew what he wanted," said Barbara Res, a former Trump Organization executive who oversaw construction projects. She told the Times that Trump once attempted to ignore building code requirements that required putting braille on elevator buttons to make them accessible to the handicapped.
"He said, ‘We won’t have handicapped people living in Trump Tower, so we don’t need that,’" Res recalled. "I never did anything illegal and I stopped him from demolishing a building without a permit. But others did."
Prosecutors are hoping to prove their case by painting Trump as a detail-obsessed micromanager who wouldn't allow six-figure payments to multiple women to go unnoticed. The prosecution is expected to rest its case possibly by the end of next week following the testimony of the ex-president's former personal attorney and fixer, Michael Cohen. Cohen — who already served a three-year federal prison sentence for his role in the scheme Trump is accused of orchestrating — is expected to confirm the prosecution's assertions that payments Trump made to him for "legal expenses" were actually reimbursements for the hush money payments. Cohen has said that he believes jurors will find his former boss "guilty on all charges."
Click here to read the Times' report in full (subscription required).
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