NEW YORK — The jury in Donald Trump’s criminal trial on Thursday were introduced to a coterie of 2010-era celebrities that included Tila Tequila, Charlie Sheen, Lindsay Lohan, and Hulk Hogan. It came as attorneys for Trump sought to discredit the latest witness for the prosecution.
That list of celebrities is also a partial list of parties with which that witness dealt in his capacity as an attorney to porn stars, sex tape bearers, and many others. The witness was Keith Davidson, the Los Angeles attorney who represented Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal as they negotiated hush money agreements with Trump in the run-up to the 2016 election.
Davidson testified as a prosecution witness on Tuesday and for several hours into Thursday, presenting himself as a surprisingly boring attorney focused on representing the discrete interests of his clients, regardless of who they may be. The result was to set up some key moments in the prosecution’s story which Michael Cohen is best positioned to describe in detail. (The ex-president’s former fixer is expected to testify, potentially in the coming days.)
During cross-examination on Thursday, Trump attorney Emil Bove placed demolition charges around the dull image of Davidson that the prosecution had managed to build.
Bove cast Davidson as a serial extortionist who made coercion of the rich and famous his business model, with Trump as a victim whose status as a presidential candidate in 2016 made him uniquely vulnerable.
It’s a clear bid by the defense to muddy the waters. Trump faces felony charges of falsifying business records in furtherance of a campaign finance conspiracy; Bove elicited hours of testimony from Davidson about his work as an attorney negotiating catch-and-kill agreements and about the manner in which he approached Trump representatives about the McDougal and Daniels stories.
The result was a heap of lurid detail that succeeded in damaging whatever credibility Davidson’s professional demeanor had established over his two days of testimony.
Take the audio of one phone call that Bove played towards the end of his cross-examination of Davidson. Michael Cohen made the recording in April 2018 during a call with Davidson in which the latter complained about Stormy Daniels.
“She wanted this money more than you could ever imagine,” Davidson said on the recording, played for the gallery. “I remember hearing her on the phone, ‘you fucking Keith Davidson, you better settle this goddamn story, because if he loses this election, and he’s going to lose, if he loses this election, we lose all fucking leverage. This case is worth zero.'”
Bove had been trying to reframe the period in October 2016 when Davidson was prodding Cohen — and Trump, by extension — to transfer the hush money payment to Stormy Daniels. Bove’s counter-narrative insinuated that Davidson had to prod Cohen not because Donald Trump, notorious cheapskate, refused to pay for his own hush money deal, but because Davidson and his client’s leverage to extort was at its peak in the immediate weeks before the election.
Much of the questioning also sought to turn the tables, repositioning Davidson and Cohen as defendants, with Bove leading the examination. Davidson, Bove said, had led a life of extortion as an attorney, securing agreements to suppress or sell rights to various seamy stories including a Tila Tequila sex tape, allegations around Charlie Sheen, a theft relating to Lindsay Lohan’s rehab records, and the Hulk Hogan-Gawker imbroglio.
It’s a familiar theme for the defense, and one we’ve hit on repeatedly in our coverage of the trial. Why hold Trump accountable for this if everyone else in his world is filthy, and potentially deserving of prosecution themselves?
The idea takes aim at the concept of accountability, and also seeks to wear down jurors who are being asked to distinguish between the specific set of allegations — that Trump falsified business records while reimbursing Michael Cohen for the Stormy Daniels payment as part of a campaign finance conspiracy — and the tidal wave of muck Bove has unleashed.
Davidson did struggle during cross-examination by Bove. At one point, Bove questioned Davidson about an extortion investigation regarding Charlie Sheen, asking if he had sought to “extract” money from the celebrity.
Bove, a Georgetown Law graduate and former federal prosecutor, said to Davidson, “look, we’re both lawyers. I’m not here to play lawyer games with you. I’m just here to ask you questions and get truthful answers.”
After a brief exchange, Davidson growled back: “If you’re not here to play legal games, then don’t say ‘extract.'”
At another point, prosecutor Joshua Steinglass, on redirect, played another recording that Cohen secretly made of a 2018 conversation with Davidson.
This hewed closely to the allegation that Trump directed the hush money scheme — central to the prosecution’s claim that Trump was then forced to reimburse his attorney.
“I can’t even tell you how many times he said to me, you know, ‘I hate the fact that we did it,'” Cohen said on the recording.
Davidson testified that he understood Cohen to be referring to Trump himself.
