The Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, who brought the ongoing hush-money trial against President Trump, detailed the 34 counts of falsifying business records that Mr. Trump faces in the case on Monday. The two witnesses the prosecution called, both closely affiliated with the Trump Organization, were asked to explain invoices, ledger entries and checks to the jury on a day dedicated to documents.     

First up was the Trump Organization’s former controller, Jeffrey McConney, who testified under subpoena. Mr. McConney worked for Mr. Trump for over 20 years before leaving the company with a $500,000 severance package early last year. In February, Mr. McConney, along with the former president, his two adult sons, and the Trump Organization’s former chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, was found liable for business fraud in a civil suit brought by New York attorney general Letitia James. The judge in the case fined the Trump Organization almost half a billion dollars. Mr. Trump is currently appealing that verdict. One of his defense lawyers from that case, Alina Habba, attended the criminal trial on Monday, as did Mr. Trump’s son, Eric. 

Mr. Trump has repeatedly called the judges in both cases, Judge Juan Merchan, who presides over the criminal case and Judge Arthur Engoron, who handled the civil case, corrupt. When he spoke to reporters at the courthouse on Monday, Mr. Trump also denounced Judge Lewis Kaplan, who oversaw the two civil defamation trials, calling all three a triple team of corrupt judges. 

“But what’s happening here is a disgrace,” Mr. Trump said in the hallway of the Manhattan criminal court. “New York looks so bad … between this judge, Engoron and Kaplan. You’re tripled teamed with corrupt judges. It’s a disgrace to our nation.”  

Last week, Judge Kaplan dismissed as “without merit” Mr. Trump’s latest attempt to throw out the defamation case brought by E. Jean Carroll, the writer who accused Mr. Trump of raping her in a dressing room on the lingerie floor of the luxury Manhattan department store, Bergdorf Goodman, sometime in the 1990s. A jury imposed an $83.3 million judgment on Mr. Trump for calling Ms. Carroll “a total con job”, and other calumny, when he denied her allegations. 

Mr. Trump’s supporters have continued to spin the narrative that New York’s courts are stacked against him. Fox News reported on Monday that one of the prosecutors in the criminal case, Matthew Colangelo, was paid “thousands of dollars for ‘political consulting’ in 2018” by the Democratic National Committee. According to Federal Election Commission records, Mr. Colangelo was paid $12,000 in two separate payments of $6,000. 

The Fox News report further details Mr. Colangelo’s career. After having served under former New York Attorney General Eric Scheiderman, a Democrat who resigned in disgrace, Mr. Colangelo became acting associate attorney general in the Justice Department, on Jan. 20, 2021, under the new Biden administration. He then rose to principal deputy associate attorney general and was put in charge of multiple departments, “including the Civil, Civil Rights, Antitrust and Tax Divisions,” Fox News writes. Previously Mr. Colangelo had also worked in the Obama Administration. 

Representative Jim Jordan, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, who is currently conducting an “oversight of politically motivated prosecutions by state and local officials,” has asked Attorney General Garland “for records related to Mr. Colangelo’s employment at the Justice Department,” according to Fox News. 

Meanwhile, Mr. Colangelo was before the jury at the Manhattan criminal trial, presenting voluminous documentation as he sought to prove Mr. Trump’s alleged illegal bookkeeping.. 

At the heart of the case is the hush-money payment to an adult film star, Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.  Ms. Clifford claims she had a one time sexual encounter with Mr. Trump during a celebrity golf tournament at Lake Tahoe in 2006. He denies the allegation. Shortly before the 2016 election, Michael Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer and current nemesis, paid Ms. Clifford $130,000 to keep quiet about her claim. The prosecution alleges that Mr. Trump directed this payment to hide the information from voters, and thus interfered with the 2016 election.  

The prosecution further alleges that when Mr. Trump reimbursed Cohen, he disguised the payment as legal expenses, hence the falsified records, a misdemeanor. But by connecting the fraudulent bookkeeping to a scheme to interfere with the election, Mr. Bragg elevated what would normally be two misdemeanors into a felony. If the jury finds Mr. Trump guilty, he could face a prison sentence of up to four years. Legal scholars from both sides of the aisle agree that prison time would be unlikely for a defendant who, like Mr. Trump, has no criminal record. 

However Mr. Trump was threatened with a jail sentence on Monday morning, after the judge ruled he violated the gag order for the tenth time. The judge fined him $1,000, after he had previously fined him $9,000 for nine other violations. The judge said he could impose a jail sentence, should Mr. Trump continue to publicly comment on witnesses and jurors.  

Questioned by Mr. Colangelo, Mr. McConney, the controller, told the jury that he oversaw the ledger books and managed the accounting department at the Trump Organization, always reporting to the former CFO Weisselberg from “the day I was hired” until the day he left.

Then Mr. McConney explained how Weisselberg told him about a reimbursement for Cohen in 2017. “Allen said, ‘We have to get some money to Michael — reimburse Michael,” Mr. McConney testified. “He tossed a pad toward me and I started taking notes on what he said. That’s how I found out about it.” The payment included Cohen’s bonus for the year and “some other money he was owed.”

The jury was shown an exhibit of a wire transfer from Cohen’s shell company, Essential Consultants LLC,, for $130,035, to Ms. Clifford’s attorney at the time, Keith Davidson. The $35 was likely the wiring fee. Last week, Mr. Davidson testified at the trial that he had indeed brokered a deal between Cohen and Ms. Clifford, to pay the adult star for not publicizing her tryst allegation.   

Handwritten notations, or rather mathematical equations, on the document illustrate Cohen’s reimbursement. Added to the $130,035 were $50,000 for an expense to an IT consulting company, Red Finch. That sum was doubled to include the roughly 50 percent taxes Cohen would have to pay as a Manhattan resident on his income. Added to the $360,000 was a bonus of $60,000. At first, Cohen was going to get a bonus of $50,000. But, Mr. McConney testified, “Michael was complaining that his bonus wasn’t high enough. This was to make up for whatever he thought he was owed.” 

The total sum now amounted to $420,000, which was divided by twelve to pay Cohen $35,000 every month over the course of one year. McConney further testified that Cohen emailed him invoices, which referred to a retainer agreement, “pursuant to the retainer agreement.” However, Mr. McConney said he never saw any retainer agreement.

Under cross-examination by one of the defense attorneys, Emil Bove, Mr. McConney explained that he never discussed the details of Cohen’s employment by Mr. Trump with Cohen, nor with Mr. Trump. Mr. Bove established that Cohen, who held no official position at the White House, was an “outside vendor,” engaged in personal legal work for Mr. Trump. He pointed out that the title on his signature line was “Attorney” and not “Fixer.” 

“Michael Cohen was a lawyer?” Mr. Bove asked the witness.

“Sure, yes,” Mr. McConney replied. 

“And payments to lawyers by the Trump Organization are legal expenses, right?” Mr. Bove continued.

“Yes,” Mr. McConney answered.

“So if you are talking about payments to an attorney, legal expenses was the category that was used?” Mr. Bove added later, to which Mr. McConney agreed. 

The prosecution dissected each payment, invoice after invoice, which Cohen sent via emails to Weisselberg, the former chief financial officer at the Trump Organization, and Weisselberg then forwarded to Mr. McConney, who directed them to Deborah Tarasoff, another longtime employee of the Trump Organization, who testified after Mr. McConney.   

Ms. Tarasoff worked as an accounts payable supervisor, during the time that Cohen sent his invoices in 2017. She has been with the Trump Organization for 24 years, she testified, and still works there today. 

“I get approved bills, I enter them in the system, and I cut the checks,” she said on the witness stand.    

Questioned by prosecutor Christopher Conroy, Ms. Tarasoff told jurors that Cohen’s invoices were processed in the same way any other invoices were. 

“The same way everything was processed,” Ms. Tarasoff said. Once she would get an approved email from Mr. McConey, she would cut the checks and send them out.   

The only difference with Cohen’s payment was that starting in April 2017, the checks came from Mr. Trump’s personal account, and since he was the only one who could sign them, they needed to be sent to the White House. 

“Somehow we would have to get a package down to the White House,” Mr. McConney had testified earlier. “The check was drawn out of President Trump’s personal account.” Mr. McConney added that, “We had to get it down to the White House for the president to sign it.”

Ms. Tarasoff confirmed the statement, “We would send them to the White House for him to sign.”

Defense attorney Todd Blanche cross-examined Ms. Tarasoff very briefly.

“You never had any reason to believe President Trump was hiding anything, correct?” Mr. Blanche asked.

“Correct,” Ms. Tarasoff replied.