One of President Trump’s key defense arguments in his current hush-money trial, as his attorney Todd Blanche explained in his opening statement, is to shift the focus to Mr. Trump’s former lawyer and current nemesis Michael Cohen, and the witness who testified on Tuesday gave the defense plenty to work with. 

Speaking from the witness stand, the attorney Keith Davidson referred to a “jerk” he had to deal with while representing the porn star Stormy Daniels and the Playboy model Karen McDougal, who were selling their stories about sexual liaisons they claimed to have had with Mr. Trump.

“I hate to ask it this way, but who was that jerk?” One of the prosecutors, Joshua Steinglass, asked Mr. Davidson.

“Michael Cohen,” Mr. Davidson answered. 

The Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, who brought the historic criminal trial against Mr. Trump, had called as his fourth witness the self-described “civil litigator, injury lawyer” and nondisclosure specialist Mr. Davidson. Born and raised in Brooklyn,  Mr. Davidson, who is 53, now works in Beverly Hills, California. He has been married for 25 years and has two children of “college age”, he told the jury.

Mr. Davidson has long specialized in both sides of cases involving celebrities seeking to avoid bad publicity. He has represented Charlie Sheen and Hulk Hogan, among other luminaries, who have sought non disclosure agreement settlements. He has also managed professional boxers Manny Pacquiao and James Toney. 

During the first part of his testimony Mr. Davidson described how he brokered a deal in 2016 between the supermarket tabloid, the National Enquirer, and Ms.  McDougal, who was Playboy’s Playmate of the Month in December 1997 and Playmate of the Year in 1998. As the Sun reported yesterday, the tabloid paid Ms. McDougal $150,000 for the exclusive rights to her claim that she had a nine month sexual relationship with Mr. Trump in 2005 and 2006, a claim he vehemently denies. The goal of the deal, on both sides, was to buy the story and by not publishing it, to bury it. 

The former publisher of the tabloid, David Pecker, testified last week that Ms. McDougal told him, “she didn’t want to be the next Monica Lewinsky.” And under Mr. Pecker’s wing, she didn’t need to tell the story, since he was concerned with protecting Mr. Trump’s reputation while he was campaigning for the presidency in 2016. The payment was disguised as a contributor agreement under which Ms. McDougal was supposed to write a fitness column and also write about the removal of her breast implants, which she found traumatic. Neither project was ever realized.

Mr. Davidson testified that he took a 45 percent cut of Ms. McDougal’s fee, a shockingly large share of her earnings. Most media attorneys would charge $5,000 or less for brokering such a small transaction.

Mr. Davidson had another client, Ms. Daniels, an adult film actor, writer and director whose real name is Stephanie Clifford and whose story is at the heart of this criminal case. Ms. Clifford claims that she had a one-night sexual encounter with Mr. Trump during a celebrity golf tournament at Lake Tahoe in 2006. Mr. Trump has repeatedly denied ever having had sex with Ms. Clifford. 

In 2016, Cohen paid Ms. Clifford $130,000 of his own money so she would keep silent about the alleged tryst. According to the criminal charge, this payment came at the direction of Mr. Trump, who then repaid Cohen the following year, but fraudulently disguised the payment as a legal expense. By combining the minor falsification of records charge with the intention of interfering with the presidential election – Mr. Trump is accused of trying to hide Ms. Clifford’s story from voters – the district attorney was able to raise the misdemeanor charges to felonies, leading to the possibility of prison time should Mr. Trump be convicted. 

On Tuesday, Mr. Davidson detailed how this alleged hush-money payment to Ms. Clifford came about. He began by telling the jury that his first conversation with Cohen dated back to 2011, after an online gossip blog had posted about the alleged affair between Ms. Clifford and Mr. Trump. 

Ms. Daniels’s talent manager, Gina Rodriguez, had called Mr. Davidson, and told him, “some jerk called and was very, very aggressive and threatened to sue.” The “jerk” turned out to be Cohen. 

“And I would like you, Keith, to call this jerk back,” Mr. Davidson testified, meaning Ms. Rodriguez wanted him to call Cohen. 

Mr. Davidson picked up the phone, he said, and called the Trump Organization, and was “transferred to Michael Cohen.” Mr. Davidson continued, “I introduced myself and before I could barely get my name out, I was just met with a hostile barrage of insults and insinuations and allegations that went on for quite a while.”

During his testimony, Mr. Trump and his defense attorney, Mr. Blanche, seated at the defense table, both seemed to be laughing. 

“Finally, after he finished, I explained that I was calling because my client Stormy Daniels did not want the story published and I wanted to see if he had done anything to contact the blog to take the story down.”

After Mr. Davidson sent the gossip blog’s proprietors a cease-and-desist letter, the offending post was removed. Fast forward to 2016. According to Mr. Davidson, Ms. Clifford’s talent manager, Ms. Rodriguez, a former porn star with a second career representing clients she has referred to as “D-listers,” had been trying in vain to sell the story during the election campaign. Time was running out. As most prognosticators did not think Mr. Trump was going to win the race, Ms. Clifford’s story stood to drop sharply in value after November 8. In June 2016, the editor in chief of the Enquirer, Dylan Howard, sent Mr. Davidson a text message, which was shown in court and read, saying, “Gina is trying to hawk Stormy again.” 

“Lol – she’s trying to sell the story to you?” Mr. Davidson replied, according to phone records displayed for the jury. 

“Yep,” Mr. Howard replied. 

It wasn’t until October, with the leak of the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape, on which Mr. Trump told television host Billy Bush that he could “grab women” by their genitals, that Ms. Clifford’s story became sellable. The tape, coming out weeks before the election, had a “tremendous influence,” Mr. Davidson said. Together with Mr. Howard and Ms. Rodriguez, Mr. Davidson wrote a non-disclosure agreement that would be signed as part of the Enquirer’s expected purchase of the exclusive rights of Ms. Clifford’s sex story, for $120,000 (the amount would later increase).  

Unexpectedly, the Enquirer pulled out of the deal. The jury learned last week from Mr. Pecker that he did not want to pay another “catch-and-kill fee,” having already paid Ms. McDougal her $150,000, as well as a $30,000 fee to a Trump Tower doorman peddling an apocryphal yarn about Mr. Trump fathering an illegitimate child with a housekeeper. Mr. Pecker told Mr. Cohen that he was “not a bank.” Mr. Howard then suggested that Mr. Rodriguez contact Cohen directly. She, in return, asked Mr. Davidson if he could intervene again. 

“It is going to be the easiest deal you’ve ever done in your entire life,” Mr. Davidson testified, quoting Ms. Rodriguez, just that he would have to “talk to that a—— Cohen.”

Mr. Davidson, who had seemed a bit shy in the first hour of his testimony, almost a little embarrassed to tell a courtroom filled with strangers how he earns his money, was more comfortable now. 

Referring to the American Media Inc. (AMI), the nonprofit news agency that owns the Enquirer, which had suddenly pulled out of the hush-money deal, Mr. Davidson said, “Michael Cohen stepped into AMI’s shoes.”

When writing the contract, Mr. Davidson testified, he disguised the parties involved by inventing pseudonyms, Ms. Clifford was Peggy Peterson and Mr. Trump was David Dennison.

He had taken the name “David Dennison” from a kid who played on his high school hockey team. When the prosecutor asked how the real Mr. Dennison felt about this, meaning that his name had been used in a nondisclosure agreement about an alleged affair between a future president and a porn star, Mr. Davidson answered, “He’s very upset.” 

But the deal didn’t turn out to be as simple as Ms. Rodriguez had predicted. Mr. Davidson explained that it took forever to get the money from Cohen. “I believed Cohen was not being truthful,” Mr.Davidson testified. “I thought he was trying to kick the can down the road until after the election.” 

Instead of a payment, Mr. Davidson got excuses like the computer systems were down, there were security issues with the Secret Service, or Cohen had misplaced the wire instructions. 

“This is a very bad situation,” Mr. Davidson told Cohen, according to his testimony, “It is making me look bad, and I don’t really believe a word that you are saying.”

“What do you expect me to do — my guy is in five f—— states today,” Mr. Davidson testified Cohen answered him, meaning Mr. Trump was campaigning in five states in one day. 

The prosecutor, Mr. Steinglass, who was sitting on the wooden divider that separates the public gallery from the well, asked his witness, “Where did you believe the money to be coming from?” 

“From Donald Trump or some kind of corporate entity,” Mr. Davidson answered.

Mr. Davidson further testified that it was his “understanding that Mr. Trump was the beneficiary of this contract.” However, Mr. Steinglass failed to get a straight answer which clearly affirmed Mr. Trump would personally cover the payment, because a defense attorney, Emil Bove, kept firing objections. The judge, Juan Merchan,  also called the parties to the sidebar, to his bench, where the attorneys held discussions which are inaudible to reporters. The judge granted most of Mr. Bove’s objections and Mr. Trump’s direct involvement with the hush-money payment was not confirmed by Mr. Davidson. 

However, the prosecution was able to present a text message sent to Mr. Davidson from Mr. Howard, the editor-in-chief at the Enquirer, jokingly referring to Mr. Trump’s income. “I reckon that Trump impersonator I hired has more cash,” the message read. 

“The entire matter was frustrating, that it was on again, off again, that there were delays in funding and cancellations,” Mr. Davidson further explained, detailing how the Daniels deal was canceled, resurrected, canceled again, until, according to Mr. Davidson, Cohen finally decided, “God damn it…I will just do it myself…” On October 27, 2016, on the brink of the presidential election, Cohen wired $130,000 to Mr. Davidson from New York to California. 

Mr. Davidson did say that Cohen “leaned on his close affiliation with Donald Trump,” and that being employed by Mr. Trump was “part of his identity.” 

But the defense will be able to use exactly these statements to distance their client from the deal. Cohen, they could attempt to show, acted on his own accord, possibly even with the intention to hurt Mr. Trump. 

Mr. Davidson’s testimony will continue on Thursday, and the defense is certainly expected to cross-examine this witness. But prior to that, Judge Merchan has scheduled another hearing on yet more gag order violations Mr. Trump committed, according to the prosecution. 

On Tuesday, Judge Merchan fined Mr. Trump $9,000 for 9 violations against a limited gag order imposed on Mr. Trump for the duration of the trial. The judge threatened the former president with a possible jail sentence should he be held in contempt of court again. During the lunch break, Mr. Trump immediately removed the posts, which violated the order, from his social media.