Trump used personal checking account to pay Michael Cohen for Stormy Daniels hush money, trial hears

Jurors in Donald Trump’s hush money trial finally got to see the paper trail for payments to Michael Cohen for buying the silence of adult film star Stormy Daniels, whose story about a sexual encounter with Mr Trump allegedly threatened to derail his 2016 presidential campaign.

Those payments included checks bearing the former president’s Sharpie-inked signature, according to documents shown in a Manhattan courtroom on Monday.

A bulk of those monthly $35,000 checks – sent to Cohen during Mr Trump’s first year as president – came out of Mr Trump’s own personal checking account.

After two weeks of witness testimony that exposed the inner workings of tabloid publishing and behind-the-scenes damage control around Mr Trump’s 2016 campaign, Manhattan prosecutors gave jurors a detailed view of the allegedly “falsified” business records that are at the heart of the case.

Two longtime Trump Organization employees – including one of Mr Trump’s co-defendants in his sprawling civil fraud case – testified for nearly six hours on Monday, providing an exhaustive overview of the Trump Organization’s accounting for Cohen’s payments.

Mr Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records by disguising payments to his former attorney as “legal expenses” across Trump Organization records. Those checks – sent in $35,000 increments over 12 months – included an additional bonus and other funds, including money intended to reimburse his $130,000 payment to Ms Daniels in 2016, according to prosecutors.

On the bottom of a bank statement that notes the withdrawal of $130,000 to Ms Daniels’ attorney in October 2016, then-Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg scribbled the rough math for Cohen’s reimbursements,