Former Trump employees detail hush money payments at heart of his trial

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• William Brangham:

  On the stand today in New York City were two former employees of the Trump Organization. They were involved in the payments that are at the very center of the charges filed against the former president in his hush money trial.

  Jeffrey McConney McConney and Deborah Tarasoff helped reimburse Mr. Trump's former attorney Michael Cohen for the payments Cohen made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels during the final days of the 2016 campaign. The former president also received another fine and a tough warning from the judge in this case, who again said, if Trump continues to violate the court's gag order, he could face jail time.

  Ximena Bustillo is covering this trial for NPR, and she joins us now.

  Ximena, so nice to see you again.

  So, today, we heard from these two former financial officers of the Trump Organization who were part of paying and accounting for these payments to Michael Cohen. What did we learn today from their testimony?

• Ximena Bustillo, NPR:

  Right.

  So the former and current employees of the Trump Organization really detailed step by step the process for reviewing vouchers, invoices and ultimately cutting checks at the Trump Organization. So we looked at almost all, if not all of the 34 business records that the prosecution is alleging that the Trump Organization and Trump himself falsified in order to hide the actual reason why he was issuing these payments to then-Trump lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen.

  And they really went through the process of how the check gets cut, how it gets invoiced, how it got signed by Trump himself. And that was a very long, lengthy process that we went through with both of them.

• William Brangham:

  We have heard previous testimony that Donald Trump was aware of payments that were made directly to women to keep their stories quiet.

  Did we get any closer to understanding what Trump did or didn't know about these alleged repayments of some of that money to Michael Cohen?

• Ximena Bustillo:

  So, today, we did learn that Trump himself was responsible for signing these checks.

  Now, the defense is still trying to create distance between Trump and the actual reason that the checks were cashed to Michael Cohen in the first place, asking the witnesses whether or not they got direct direction from Trump to issue these payments and pay stubs. Some of them said no, that that came from other direction, and also saying that getting these kinds of directives was not necessarily out of the ordinary.

  So we're still kind of connecting the dots in terms of how much Trump knew, at what point was he involved, and what kind of direction and strengths he was pulling. So those are still questions that the prosecution needs to fully answer.

• William Brangham:

  And, separately, this day began with Judge Merchan finding that Donald Trump had again violated the gag order, fined him another $1,000, and said, next time, if you violate this again, I could potentially sentence you to jail.

  What was it that — I mean, Trump, I take it he also said in between court today that he would welcome something like that, he'd be honored or something, to go to jail. What was the judge responding to? What had Trump done that set him off?

• Ximena Bustillo:

  So, last week, the prosecution took issue with four statements that Trump had made earlier, a few weeks ago, and, ultimately, Judge Juan Merchan issued a violation one of the statements. And that was a statement that Trump had made in an interview where he accused the jury of being — quote — "95 percent Democrat."

  This statement, the judge himself said last week was concerning to him any, kind of inference or a character judgment on the jury. Judge Merchan is very protective of this jury. It's supposed to be an anonymous jury, and he's taken a lot of steps to make sure that they are safe and protected from any sort of intimidation or threats.

  Now, Judge Merchan has also previously said that $1,000 is the max penalty that can be issued per violation. So, last week, we also saw a different set of gag order violations totaling $9,000. This time, it was only $1,000.

  Now, Judge Merchan has said that he's aware that, for someone like Donald Trump, who is wealthy and of a higher stature, that fine might not be enough to deter future violations or future breaking of the gag order. And so that's where the punishment and threat of jail time comes into play.

  And that's something that the judge has threatened before. But, this morning, he was particularly very pointed. In fact he didn't even really talk about the order on the stand and instead took his time to tell — to tell former President Donald Trump that, if he were to violate this order again or continue to do so, he will take the necessary steps and maybe even resources to jail.

• William Brangham:

  Ximena Bustillo of NPR, thank you so much.

• Ximena Bustillo:

  Thank you.