Trump Trial: Key Figures in NY Hush Money Case

Former President Donald Trump is heading into week three of his hush money trial in New York, and prosecutors have begun calling on a cast of characters from Trump’s past as they aim to prove he conspired to falsify business records before and after the 2016 election.

The prosecutors, working on behalf of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, summoned former tabloid executive David Pecker to the stand for four days of questioning, then they called on longtime Trump aide Rhona Graff and banker Gary Farro.

Based on court documents, including Bragg’s indictment and statement of facts, several others are expected to appear as possible witnesses in the coming weeks. Below is a compilation of key figures and potential witnesses as the case moves forward.

Michael Cohen

Cohen is the witness most directly involved in the activity cited in Bragg’s indictment. Prosecutors are expected to call him to the stand to testify about payments he arranged to help Trump’s 2016 campaign. Critics of Bragg’s case have observed that it is severely weakened by relying on Cohen, who has admitted in the past to lying on multiple occasions.

Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to lying to a bank, evading taxes, violating campaign finance laws, and lying to Congress. He was sentenced to three years in prison and eventually blamed Trump for encouraging his criminal activity.

Trump’s defense team has indicated in court papers that it plans to chip away at Cohen’s credibility, as well as highlight that Cohen is a highly vocal Trump critic aiming to sell his books, such as one he wrote about Trump called Revenge.

Trump is restricted by a gag order from speaking publicly about Cohen while Cohen has gone on a media bender in preparation for the trial. After drawing scrutiny from even Democratic-aligned legal analysts for speaking so antagonistically about Trump, Cohen recently announced he would curtail his public opining until after he testified.

Stormy Daniels

Daniels, a porn star, is one of three people whom Bragg alleges Trump illegally paid off.

Daniels approached America Media, Inc., which owns the National Enquirer, in October 2016 and said she wanted to come forward with an allegation that she had an affair with Trump.

Bragg alleged that Trump instructed Cohen to pay Daniels’s attorney $130,000 to keep Daniels silent, effectively preventing her claims about Trump from becoming public in the lead-up to the election. Trump, according to Bragg, illegally concealed the payments to Daniels after he won the election.

Daniels in 2018 denied that the affair happened, according to a public statement that contained her signature. She later walked back the statement in interviews.

Daniels has embraced her public image since the debacle and released an eponymous documentary this year that centered on her experiences with Trump.

Keith Davidson

Davidson was Daniels’s lawyer and negotiated the payment to Daniels with Cohen, according to Bragg’s statement of facts. Davidson is named only as “Lawyer B” in the document.

Karen McDougal

McDougal, a former playboy model, is the second of the three people Bragg alleged that Trump conspired to pay off.

McDougal approached the National Enquirer months before the election and said she wanted to go public with an allegation that she had an affair with Trump.

Pecker testified that he, in coordination with Cohen, negotiated an agreement to purchase the rights to McDougal’s story for $150,000 under the promise that Cohen would eventually repay him. Pecker testified that the agreement involved burying McDougal’s story so that it would not become public before the 2016 election.

Defense attorneys have argued that nondisclosure agreements, such as those between Pecker and McDougal, are not illegal.

David Pecker

Pecker, the former CEO of tabloid company American Media, Inc., testified for four days about his “catch-and-kill” practice, which involved paying sources for rights to their negative stories about high-profile figures and then never publishing the stories.

Prosecutors sought to showcase during their questioning how Pecker did this on three occasions for Trump to help him with the 2016 election, while defense attorneys poked holes in Pecker’s testimony and illustrated how Pecker had a long pattern of catching and killing stories for many public figures, not just Trump.

Dylan Howard

Howard was the editor in chief of National Enquirer at the time that it made its editorial decisions about Trump while he was a candidate.

Howard was a go-between for Pecker and sources who wanted to come forward about Trump.

Gary Farro

Farro testified on Friday about his former role as senior managing director at First Republic Bank. Farro was assigned to the bank’s longtime customer Cohen at the time that Cohen obtained a $130,000 loan from the bank to pay Daniels’s lawyer.

Farro confirmed from the witness stand that he wrote an internal email on Oct. 13, 2016, that read, “Need an account opened for Mike Cohen immediately. He wants no address on the checks. Calling you now to discuss,” according to a report from the courtroom..

Cohen opened a real estate consulting company with the bank and then used that company to attempt to purchase AMI’s rights to McDougal’s story and then, days later, to pay Daniels’s lawyer.

Rhona Graff

Graff, a longtime personal assistant to Trump, appeared as a witness under subpoena on Friday. She testified that she worked for the Trump Organization for more than three decades and maintained its contact list, according to a report from the courtroom.

Graff confirmed for prosecutors that Daniels and Karen McDougal, another woman Trump is accused of silencing, were part of the contact list. Prosecutors used Graff to verify that Daniels appeared in the contact list simply as “Stormy.”

Hope Hicks

Hicks, a former Trump aide, is expected to testify about her knowledge of negotiations between Cohen, Trump, and Pecker, according to multiple reports.

Questions have swirled about what meetings and calls Hicks was present for during the alleged payment scandals, but federal court documents unsealed in Cohen’s prosecution in 2018 indicated she at least spoke with Trump and Cohen ahead of Cohen paying Daniels’s attorney.

Madeleine Westerhout

Westerhout, the former director of Oval Office operations in Trump’s White House, would have been privy to any meetings Trump took in the renowned room at the start of his presidency, including meetings with Cohen.

Westerhout, according to ABC News, was subpoenaed to testify in the trial, but it is unclear if and when she will.

Allen Weisselberg

Weisselberg, the former CFO of the Trump Organization, is referenced as “TO CFO” in Bragg’s statement of facts. Weisselberg, 76, is currently serving out a five-month prison sentence at Rikers Island for perjury in a separate civil case involving Trump’s business practices.

Bragg alleged that Weisselberg helped orchestrate the payment arrangements to McDougal and Daniels.

Bragg cited in his statement of facts an audio recording, which was leaked to media in 2018, in which Cohen told Trump he spoke to Weisselberg “about how to set the whole thing up with funding” in relation to the payment to McDougal.

Dino Sajudin

Sajudin, a doorman working at Trump Tower in New York, went to AMI in 2015 with an allegation that he heard Trump fathered a love child.

Pecker testified that he paid Sajudin $30,000 to prevent his story from appearing in the news at the instruction of Cohen. Alongside Daniels and McDougal, Sajudin is the third of the three people Bragg claimed Trump conspired to illegally pay off to help his election.

The doorman told AMI he overheard Trump aides talking about how the then-candidate had a child out of wedlock, though, according to media outlets who vetted the story at the time, there was little indication the story was true, and AMI employees also found it dubious.

Matthew Colangelo

Colangelo is a leading prosecutor in the hush-money case who delivered the prosecution’s opening statement.

Bragg plucked Colangelo from the Department of Justice in 2022, but he did not hire Colangelo for his white-collar prosecutorial experience, which was lacking at the time he joined Bragg’s office.

Bragg instead valued Colangelo’s “broad knowledge” of the Trump Organization, according to a New York Times report published at the end of 2022.

Before working at the DOJ, Colangelo worked for Attorney General Letitia James, who investigated Trump for three years before bringing a massive civil lawsuit against Trump in the fall of 2022.

During his time in James’s office, Colangelo was involved in Trump’s civil case and also led her office’s federal initiatives, which involved filing lawsuits against the Trump administration, as well as investigating the Trump Foundation.

Todd Blanche and Susan Necheles

Blanche and Necheles are veteran New York attorneys leading Trump’s defense. They both run their own firms and are the first attorneys in history to take on defending a former president in a criminal trial.

Blanche, according to the New York Times, was a registered Democrat in New York just one year ago but recently became a registered Republican in Florida.

Juan Merchan

The judge presiding over the case has maintained an orderly courtroom, but he has drawn criticism from Trump and his supporters for a gag order he imposed on the former president, as well as a conflict of interest Trump alleges Merchan has with the case.

Merchan modeled his gag order after one an appellate court in Washington, D.C., outlined in Trump’s separate criminal case there. The gag order restricts Trump from speaking about known witnesses in the case, court staff and their family members, and prosecutors and their family members. Trump has decried the order as unconstitutional, saying voters have a right to hear the presumptive Republican presidential nominee speak freely.

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Trump has also twice pushed to have Merchan recused from the case because his daughter, Loren Merchan, works at a top Democratic marketing firm. Her firm has had lucrative business relationships with some of Trump’s top political rivals, including Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Vice President Kamala Harris. Schiff solicited campaign funds last year by citing Trump’s case in at least one email, and Trump’s attorneys argued that proved Loren Merchan could financially benefit from the outcome of the case.

Juan Merchan rejected both of Trump’s recusal requests, saying an independent judicial panel found no direct conflict of interest.