Attorney Keith Davidson testified Tuesday how he leveraged media relationships to shop salacious stories about Donald Trump from Playboy model Karen McDougal and porn star Stormy Daniels — both of whom received payments from allies of the GOP nominee during his 2016 campaign.
Mr. Davidson is known for representing people trying to sell celebrity sex tapes or other embarrassing information. His testimony injected life into Mr. Trump’s hush money trial after a series of custodian-of-records witnesses who delivered quick, mundane testimony so prosecutors could enter evidence from video clips and depositions.
Mr. Davidson described how he played various media outlets against each other to sell a story from Ms. McDougal, who alleged she had an affair with Mr. Trump but didn’t necessarily want the tale to become public. Earlier testimony suggested she was leveraging her story for career opportunities.
The National Enquirer was initially cool to the story because Ms. McDougal “lacked documentary evidence of the interaction,” according to Mr. Davidson, but editor-in-chief Dylan Howard reached out again a month later to resume discussions in the heat of the 2016 campaign.
Mr. Davidson said he was playing the Enquirer and ABC News against each other to get the best deal for McDougal. She would’ve had to go public with her story if she went to ABC, he said.
Prosecutors are trying to prove that Mr. Trump, through his lawyer Michael Cohen, paid hush money to avoid bad press near the 2016 election. They say those actions tipped into criminality with efforts to conceal payments made to Ms. Daniels, who says she had a sexual encounter with Mr. Trump in 2006.
Mr. Trump denies the claims by Ms. Daniels and Ms. McDougal and has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records.
The trial on Tuesday also featured testimony from Gary Farro, a banker who worked with Mr. Cohen in 2016.
Within a day after opening the Essential Consultants LLC account on Oct. 26, 2016, and funding it with about $130,000 from his own home equity loan, Mr. Cohen wired $130,000 to Mr. Davidson, then a lawyer for Ms. Daniels, documents showed.
The 2016 presidential election was on Nov. 8.
Mr. Farro said Mr. Cohen indicated the transaction was related to a real estate transaction — not a political candidate, an adult film performer or buying a media story.
“We might consider something like that a reputational risk,” Mr. Farro said, adding later the bank might not have opened the account if it had known it was for a shell company that sends or receives money but doesn’t have an underlying business.
On cross-examination, defense attorneys tried to characterize Mr. Cohen as a difficult person. Mr. Trump’s lawyers plan to attack Mr. Cohen as a rogue actor with no credibility when he takes the stand.
“He was a challenging client because of his desire to get things done so quickly,” Mr. Farro said. “Ninety percent of the time it was an urgent matter.”
Robert Browning, the executive director of C-SPAN’s archives, was called to verify the authenticity of recordings of Mr. Trump.
His testimony let the prosecution play clips of Mr. Trump from 2016 and 2017. In them, he denies allegations from Ms. Daniels and other women and praises Mr. Cohen as a good lawyer.
Another witness, Phillip Thompson, authenticated parts of a deposition in former magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll’s defamation trial against Mr. Trump. The portions included Ms. Carroll’s lawyer asking Mr. Trump about his Truth Social platform, the date of his marriage to Melania Trump and whether he was aware of the “Access Hollywood” tape.
• This story is based in part on wire service reports.