#Evidence is displayed in the courtroom, including texts about the deal.
The text message exchanges we're seeing are dated June 16, 2016, one month before the #RNC, when #Trump formally accepted the #Republican Party's nomination. While behind the scenes, his fixer, #MichaelCohen, was frantically trying to ensure that Playboy model #KarenMcDougal would not go public w/her story about having had sex w/Trump.
After pleading #guilty to #MoneyLaundering & #obstruction of #justice, Paul #Manafort, the globe-trotting #political consultant & former campaign chairman for #Trump, asked for leniency in his sentencing, telling a federal judge 5 yrs ago that he was nearly 70, struggling w/health concerns & remorseful for his actions.
Emails, documents & interviews fill in details of Manafort’s life & work between 2020, when he swapped #prison for home confinement owing to the COVID pandemic & then landed a #pardon from #Trump, & this #election cycle, as he prepares to reenter Trump’s orbit. Advisers say Trump is determined to hire #Manafort, likely handing him a substantial role at the #RNC in Milwaukee, #Wisconsin because he appreciates that his onetime campaign chairman has remained #loyal to him even while… in prison.
The prosecution asks that the defense be precluded from asking #StormyDaniels whether she was arrested. Justice #Merchan agrees w/the prosecutors, saying that “anybody can be arrested” & that it “doesn’t prove anything.”
The people call Stormy Daniels back to the stand
#Trump atty #Necheles begins questioning by saying that in 2011, Daniels denied having had sex w/Trump.
Madeleine #Westerhout is asked about the #AccessHollywood tape on which Trump said that women would let him grope them bc of his celebrity. She testifies that while at the #RNC, she was privy to conversations about whether to replace #Trump as the presidential nominee after the tape’s release.
Trump, who has never trusted the RNC & has always been suspicious of the old-guard #Republican establishment, watched Westerhout intensely as she described the org's internal conversations.
It’s Trump’s Party Now
Following the installation of Trump’s daughter-in-law, the #RNC has hired a 28-yr-old fmr bikini model as its new spox. Elizabeth Pipko, who has posed for SportsIllustrated, Maxim, & Esquire, a longtime admirer of #Trump, previously worked on his 2016 campaign. “The things he’s been through have been unreal. A lot of people look at what he’s up against every day & see his real character”
[I can hear her eyelashes batting in that quote]