By Jack Queen
(Reuters) - Donald Trump’s historic hush money trial in New York is set to feature a colorful cast of witnesses. Among the prosecution witnesses expected to testify are Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen, porn star Stormy Daniels, a Playboy model, the former publisher of the National Enquirer and Trump's communications director.
David Pecker, the publisher of tabloid newspaper the National Enquirer is expected to be the prosecution's first witness on Monday morning.
Here’s a look at some of the key witnesses slated to take the stand:
DAVID PECKER
Pecker was the CEO of American Media and publisher of the National Enquirer until August 2020.
Prosecutors say Pecker, a longtime Trump friend, met with Trump and Cohen at Trump Tower in August 2015 to discuss using the National Enquirer to suppress negative stories about Trump by buying exclusive rights to them and never publishing them.
Prosecutors say the Daniels payment was part of a broader "catch and kill" scheme to bury negative stories about Trump.
Pecker and American Media provided prosecutors with details about Cohen’s payment to Daniels after being subpoenaed by federal investigators in April 2018, according to prosecutors. Pecker was later granted immunity in exchange for testimony about Trump’s knowledge of the payment.
STORMY DANIELS
Daniels, an adult film actress whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, claims she had a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006 and was paid $130,000 by Trump's former lawyer Cohen for her silence ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
Cohen says Trump directed the payment, and prosecutors say Trump falsely classified reimbursements to Cohen as legal expenses. Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
Trump has denied the encounter with Daniels and said the payment was personal and was not related to the campaign.
MICHAEL COHEN
Cohen served as Trump’s personal lawyer and fixer for more than a decade until their acrimonious break nearly six years ago as Cohen faced his own personal legal troubles.
Cohen, a top executive at Trump's real estate company before becoming his lawyer, paid Daniels out of his own pocket through a shell company and arranged for her to sign a non-disclosure agreement, according to prosecutors.
In August 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to a campaign finance law violation for paying Daniels. He was sentenced to three years in prison for that and other crimes and served more than a year before being released.
Cohen testified against Trump at his civil fraud trial in New York last year, saying in the unrelated case that Trump directed him to fraudulently inflate his property values.
Trump denies those allegations.
KAREN MCDOUGAL
McDougal is a former Playboy model who has said Pecker’s American Media paid her $150,000 in 2016 for her story about a 10-month affair she says she had with Trump in the mid-2000s, the Wall Street Journal reported in November 2016.
Trump denies having an affair with McDougal.
Trump has not been charged over the alleged McDougal payment, but prosecutors say her testimony will give jurors context about the so-called "catch and kill" practice of buying exclusive rights to stories in order to bury them.
HOPE HICKS
Hicks served as Trump’s press secretary during his presidential campaign and later became his White House communications director.
An unredacted search warrant released in July 2019 showed that Hicks participated in phone calls between Trump and Cohen where they allegedly discussed the hush money payments, ABC News reported in July 2018.
DONALD TRUMP
Trump has said he plans to testify, which could be a risky and open him up to probing cross-examination by prosecutors. Defendants are presumed innocent and are not required to take the stand.
But prosecutors must prove Trump intended to break the law to secure a conviction, and he could use his testimony to rebut that assertion.
Trump frequently uses courtroom appearances to rally his supporters, and the Republican candidate could use the spectacle of taking the stand as the equivalent of a campaign stop in the run up to the November U.S. presidential election.
(Reporting by Jack Queen; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
