Trump trial live updates: Donald asked Michael Cohen in the White House if he ‘needed money’ and promised he would pay him back for the deal to silence Stormy Daniels

From Rob Crilly, Senior Political Reporter inside the courtroom:

Eric Trump is sitting in the second row next to his wife Lara.

He just gave up his seat in the front row to accommodate Rep. Byron Donalds.

‘The entire Republican Party is in this room.’ Trump himself looks more relaxed today, smiling as he talks to lead defense lawyer Todd Blanche.

Hoffinger takes Cohen through a series of invoices, checks, and pay stubs.

She repeatedly asks him to answer, ‘Is that a false record,’ and he agrees. He also identifies signatures on checks he received, including one by ‘Donald J. Trump,’ and one by Donald Trump, Jr.

Cohen lists ‘payment for services rendered’ in monthly invoices that are continuing through the spring and summer of 2017.

Cohen testifies about a Feb. 14, 2017 memo.

‘Pursuant to the retainer agreement, kindly remit payment for services rendered for the months of January and Februaryu, 2017,’ it says. Cohen says he created the invoice after speaking to Jeff McConney, who reported to Allen Weisselberg.

Cohen had asked McConney via email how much the monthly agreement was for. ‘$35,000,’ he responded.

‘Does the invoice say that it’s for services rendered not only for the month of January but February,’ Hoffinger asks. Cohen agrees.

‘In truth was this invoice for any services that you had rendered for those two months?’ she asked him. Cohen says it wasn’t.

He gets asked if the reimbursement for services rendered was a truthful statement. He says it isn’t.

‘The reimbursement to me for the hush money fee as well as Red Finch and the bonus,’ he said.

Michael Cohen is back on the stand. He began his testimony with a ‘good morning’ to prosecutor Susan Hoffinger.

After speaking about an internal document related to invoices, he speaks about his Feb. 8, 2017 trip to the White House.

‘I was stiting with President Trump. And he asked me if I was okay. He asked me if I needed money. I said no all good because I can get a check,’ Cohen said.

One piece of evidence establishes that he is as giddy to be there as any tourist. Cohen is seen posing in front of the podium in the White House briefing room.

‘I do have a lot of surrogates and they are speaking very beautifully,’ said Trump to reporters as he walked into court Tuesday.

North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, Vivek Ramaswamy, Speaker Mike Johnson and GOP Congressmen Byron Donalds and Cory Mills are accompanying Trump to court today.

He is wearing a golden orange tie similar in color to the tie he wore last week.

‘You ask me questions that I’m not allowed to answer. They’re the easiest questions that could possibly be asked,’ Trump said about Judge Merchan’s gag order.

He went on to slam Judge Engoron, who presided over his civil fraud trial.

‘He’s under investigation right now, he under a big investigation I hear.’

Trump went on to complain about the ‘icebox’ temperatures in Manhattan criminal court.

‘I’ve been here for nearly four in weeks in the ice box I call it the icebox.’

Before things can get underway, the prosecution asks for a bench conference. Lawyers for Trump and the government huddle with Judge Merchan. Trump chats with lawyer Emil Bove while Todd Blanche speaks with the judge.

Members of Trump’s entourage are chatting, with Doug Burgum rustling in his seat and Vivek Ramaswamy turning backward to speak to Lara and Eric Trump.

Ramaswamy also flashes a cell phone, which was in his hand.

Former President Donald Trump sauntered into court, sporting a yellow tie, and dropped some documents onto the defense table in front of him.

He immediately began chatting with lawyer Todd Blanche, and pointed to someone on the prosecution side of the courtroom.

He once again submits to photographs by a group of photographers with cameras close in to get the shot.

House Speaker Mike Johnson’s move to join Trump’s court entourage is an extraordinary move for the man who is third in line for the presidency, and is another sign of the total embrace Trump is getting from congressional Republicans.

It comes days after days after the House rejected an effort by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) to remove Johnson from office through a procedural motion.

Trump sided with the speaker in the spat, meeting with Johnson and posting in advance that ‘this is not the time’ to move to vacate the chair, as Greene was proposing.

The Speaker’s office left no doubt which side he is on.

‘The Speaker will then address media outside of the ongoing sham prosecution of President Trump,’ his office announced.

‘Speaker Johnson will address the political persecution of the 45th President of the United States by President Biden’s weaponized Department of Justice and the left-wing Manhattan district attorney.’

Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), a Trump critic, criticized the move.

‘Have to admit I’m surprised that @SpeakerJohnson wants to be in the “I cheated on my wife with a porn star” club. I guess he’s not that concerned with teaching morality to our young people after all,’ she posted.

Donald Trump attacked the judge in the hush money trial again on Tuesday by claiming he is ‘making big money’ off the ‘scam and its outcome’.

The former president took his targeting of Judge Juan Merchan to a new level in an early morning tirade on Truth Social.

‘Virtually every Legal Analyst and Scholar said yesterday, at the end of the day, THAT THERE IS NO CASE, AND THAT THIS WITCH HUNT SHOULD HAVE NEVER BEEN BROUGHT, AND SHOULD BE THROWN OUT NOW!!!

‘WHY WASN’T THIS HOAX BROUGHT SEVEN YEARS AGO, INSTEAD OF IN THE MIDDLE OF MY WINNING CAMPAIGN FOR PRESIDENT — ELECTION INTERFERENCE.

‘The problem is that this Judge, Merchan, is TOTALLY COMPROMISED, CONFLICTED, AND CORRUPT, MAKING BIG MONEY OFF OF THIS SCAM AND ITS OUTCOME.

‘He can’t render a fair decision, too much is at stake for him and the Democrats. The Appellate Division should remove him immediately!’

Stormy Daniels wore a bulletproof vest to and from the courthouse in New York last week when she appeared as a witness in Donald Trump‘s hush money trial.

Stormy Daniels attorney, said his client was particularly worried about being targeted as she came to detail the alleged sexual encounter at the center of the trial.

‘She was concerned about the security coming in to New York,’ Clark Brewster told CNN on Monday night.

‘She wore a bulletproof vest every day until until she got to the courthouse’, he explained.

Michael Cohen has left his Manhattan apartment to head downtown to the court for his second day of testimony.

Donald Trump’s former fixer stepped out in a suit and light blue tie after spending Monday detailing how he arranged hush money deals for his old boss.

He will take the stand and will first be questioned by the prosecution.

Then he will face a bruising cross-examination from Trump’s lawyers who will attack from all sides to undermine his credibility

Donald Trump will bring two running mate contenders in his entourage when he arrives in court for the Manhattan trial on Tuesday.

The former president brought his son Eric and his team of loyal aides for the opening weeks of the case.

Now he is turning to Republican politicians and candidates to be his vice president for support.

North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum and Vivek Ramaswamy will sit in the Manhattan Criminal Court on Tuesday for the second day of Michael Cohen’s testimony.

Speaker Mike Johnson and GOP Congressmen Byron Donalds and Cory Mills will also be in tow.

Limited in the campaigning he can do from the courtroom, he is now bringing the VP stakes and his biggest allies with him.

Michael Cohen was new on the job, and anxious to please his new boss that he was worth his new $375,000 salary and Fifth Avenue skyscraper office.

So in an early display of his tough guy lawyer chops, he went to work on an outstanding billing conundrum at the ill-fated Trump University. About 50 vendors had not been paid, with a total that ‘far exceeded’ the $2 million available in the venture’s bank account.

The personal injury lawyer got to work, creating a hand-written spread sheet that ‘came up with basically 20 percent of everyone’s invoice’ – denying each of them 80 per cent of what they were owed. (Two other vendors ‘just went away.’) He called each of them one-by-one to tell them what they were getting.

Donald Trump’s response when Cohen told him what he accomplished? ‘Fantastic,’ Cohen testified. It made him feel ‘like I was on top of the world,’ at a company that he described as like ‘a big family.’

Years later, it would be Cohen’s turn to feel what it was like to feel stiffed, even after helping guide Trump to the White House. His annual bonus came in at two-thirds of what it had been before.

‘I was truly insulted, personally hurt by it,’ Cohen told prosecutor Susan Hoffinger. He told her he was ‘truly pissed off and angry’ and that ‘I used quite a few expletives.’

When Donald Trump sat down with his lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen to discuss his plans to run for president in 2016 he had a simple warning.

‘You know that when this comes out, meaning the announcement, just be prepared, there’s going to be a lot of women coming forward,’ is how Cohen remembered the conversation.

During more than five hours of riveting testimony on Monday, Cohen described the extraordinary lengths he went to in keeping their stories out of the headlines.

He worked his contacts in the media, set up front companies and received invoices from businesses with meaningless names like ‘Investor Advisory Services.’

And in so doing the prosecution’s star witness added the one link missing from the past three weeks of evidence: He told the court that Trump told him to do it.

Michael Cohen will return to the stand on Tuesday morning to deliver more testimony against his old boss, Donald Trump.

The fixer and lawyer, who was convicted over the hush money payments to Stormy Daniels and lying to Congress, is set to face grueling questioning from the former president’s lawyers.

Cohen also described working at ‘the direction of and for the benefit’ of the presumptive Republican nominee.