Former President Donald Trump found himself in court once again on Friday, facing allegations in Alvin Bragg's trial concerning payments made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, also known as Stephanie Clifford.
Trump is accused of orchestrating 'hush payments' through his then-attorney Michael Cohen, in an attempt to prevent the story of their alleged affair from being published in the National Enquirer.
The payments made to Daniels did not originate from Trump's 2016 presidential campaign funds, according to Trump's attorney Joe Tacopina. Instead, they were processed through internal business records, with no tax deductions claimed and no obligation to report them to the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
Bragg's prosecution team alleges that Trump committed fraud by labeling the payment as "legal fees." The final witnesses were called to testify on Friday, following Daniels' appearance on the witness stand earlier in the week.
One of the witnesses was Jaden Jarmel-Schneider, a paralegal from Bragg's office. He testified that his office had deleted three pages of phone call records between Daniels' lawyer Keith Davidson and Michael Cohen.
CNN reported that defense attorney Emil Bove questioned the evidence presented by the prosecution. He asked Jarmel-Schneider about the deletion of some toll records between Davidson and Cohen after the defense had submitted recordings between the two from 2018.
Jarmel-Schneider admitted that some call records had been deleted from the files. He also confirmed that some calls were removed from an exhibit of calls between Gina Rodriguez and Dylan Howard. Bove estimated that three pages' worth of records had been removed. Jarmel-Schneider disagreed with Bove's characterization of the number as "significant," but acknowledged that some records were indeed removed.
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