- People’s Exhibit 35 is key evidence in the Donald Trump hush-money trial.
- It documents the hush-money payment and an alleged conspiracy to falsify its reimbursement.
- But whether Exhibit 35 will clinch or crash the DA’s case depends on Michael Cohen.
Welcome to People’s Exhibit 35, the single most important piece of evidence in the Donald Trump hush-money trial.
You’ll see this one-page document in its succinct entirety just a few paragraphs down. Then, I’ll walk you through it, section by section.
People’s 35 is the fulcrum for the entire case. As they make their closing arguments next week, prosecutors are sure to say it proves Trump is guilty, while the defense will say it proves he’s innocent.
And which side wins will depend in large part on whether jurors believe key prosecution witness Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer who testified last week that Trump personally saw — and approved — the document’s contents.
People’s 35 looks a little complicated, but I promise this won’t hurt a bit. Go ahead, scroll through it, just to see what it looks like, and I’ll meet you on the other side, where we’ll take it apart.
As you can see, People’s 35 is a one-page bank statement from October 2016 for something called “Essential Consultants,” an LLC controlled by Cohen.
The highlights, but not the handwriting, are mine.
It may not look like a lot, but I bet you when prosecutors found this hardcopy sheet of paper among hundreds of thousands of pages of subpoenaed Trump Organization documents, somebody shouted, “Holy @#$%!!!!”
People’s 35 encapsulates almost the entirety of the alleged hush-money-conspiracy. It has almost everything, and all on one page.
The block I’ve colored turquoise shows Cohen wired $130,000 of his own money to a lawyer for porn star Stormy Daniels on October 27, 2016, just 12 days before the election.
That, for anyone who’s sleeping through the trial, is the hush money.
The green block? That’s where Cohen scribbled that Trump owes him $180,000, which is the hush money plus a $50,000 outlay Cohen previously made. (That “TECH SERVICES” outlay is a funny story of its own, which we’ll get to.)
And the yellow block shows where Trump’s former top money man, ex-CFO Allen Weisselberg, scratched out how much Cohen was owed. Weisselberg then worked out how that total would be (allegedly illegally) doubled to account for income taxes and how that grand total would then be (allegedly illegally) reimbursed.
No fingerprints, though
Yes, People’s 35 has almost everything — the $130,000 hush-money payment itself and the actual chicken-scratched math behind what prosecutors call a conspiracy to falsify the business records for Cohen’s reimbursement.
What People’s 35 does not have is Trump’s fingerprints, a point that the defense is sure to point out in closing arguments set to begin as early as Tuesday.
To connect Trump to the alleged scheme, jurors will need to believe Cohen — who told them last week that when all the calculating and scribbling was done, he and Weisselberg marched this very page into Trump’s office on the 26th floor of Trump Tower in Manhattan.
It was mid-January 2017, and Trump was days away from his inauguration.
Prosecutors say that Trump’s schedule was packed at the time with teleprompter training sessions and meetings with future chief of staff Reince Priebus.
But Trump carved out a moment nonetheless to sit with Weisselberg, his loyal CFO, and with Cohen, his attorney, who prosecutors say had just fronted $130,000 of his own cash to pay off a porn actor and was eager for repayment.
The defense counters that this meeting never happened and that Cohen and Weisselberg are solely responsible for any falsified documents.
They are expected to tell jurors next week that Trump was too busy running the country in 2017 to have had a hand in the year’s worth of bogus “retainer” reimbursement checks to Cohen — including nine checks he signed personally.
‘He approved it’
“Did he show this document to Mr. Trump?” prosecutor Susan Hoffinger asked Cohen during his direct testimony on Monday, the “he” being Weisselberg.
“Yes,” Cohen answered, as Trump watched from the defense table
“And what, if anything, did Mr. Trump say at the time?” the prosecutor asked.
“He approved it,” Cohen answered, referring to Trump. “And he also said, ‘This is going to be one heck of a ride in DC.'”
Ready? Here’s a closer look, starting with the purple-highlighted section at the top.
Prosecutors allege that less than two weeks before the 2016 election, Cohen tapped his own home equity line of credit in order to purchase Daniels’ silence.
But Cohen obscured his role as a hush-money bag man. Instead of sending the money directly, he first wired the $130,000 into the bank account for a newly created shell company called Essential Consultants, LLC.
The LLC’s sole purpose was to handle the hush-money payment, Cohen testified.
“Can we put up People’s Exhibit 35, please, in evidence?” Hoffinger, the prosecutor, asked just after Monday’s lunch break.
The document was displayed on personal screens for each of the jurors, and on four large overhead screens for the audience.
“Do you recognize this document?” Hoffinger asked.
“I do,” Cohen answered. “This is the bank statement for Essential Consultants for the period of October 26th of 2016 through the 31st of October of 2016,” Cohen explained.
Next, let’s turn to the pink-highlighted section.
Here, we see the $130,000 hush-money payment moving in, and then out, of the Essential Consultants bank account.
Cohen testified last week that he took the money from his HELOC, or home-equity line of credit, so he could hide the big outlay from his wife.
Her name was on the HELOC, but the billing was paperless, Cohen explained.
“You decided to do it this way, it was quick, you could move the money quickly, because you wanted to conceal it from your wife, correct?” defense lawyer Todd Blanche asked Cohen during cross-examination on Thursday.
“Correct,” Cohen answered.
Let’s move to the turquoise section, highlighting where the money went.
So long, hush money.
People's Exhibit 35 shows that on October 27 — only 12 days before the election — Cohen wired the $130,000 from Essential Consultants to Keith Davidson, who was Daniels' lawyer at the time.
Davidson also repped Karen McDougal, the former Playboy Bunny who had been paid $150,000 just weeks prior to keep her silent about a nearly yearlong affair she said she had with Trump.
Both the porn star and the pinup model say they slept with Trump at the same Lake Tahoe celebrity golf tournament in 2006. Trump's son with Melania Trump was then four months old.
Trump has consistently denied having sex with the two women.
Davidson's testimony in early May was noteworthy for its name-dropping. The attorney told jurors he peddled salacious celebrity stories to the National Enquirer, including stories targeting Charlie Sheen, Hulk Hogan, Lindsay Lohan, and Tila Tequila.
The defense used its cross-examination of Davidson to imply that Trump was no mastermind and was instead a helpless victim of something akin to celebrity extortion.
Next: Cohen's handwriting, highlighted in green, from the bottom right corner.
Here is where Cohen testified he made a jotted note of another personal outlay Trump owed him for, on top of the $130,000 and the wiring fee of $35.
This was a reimbursement for $50,000 paid to the Virginia tech company RedFinch Solutions LLC.
RedFinch did polling for the Trump campaign and set up the Twitter account @WomenForCohen, touting him as a so-called "pit bull" and "sex symbol."
"He told me to add up the 130 with the 50,000 for RedFinch — total it to 180,000," Cohen testified Monday, referring to a talk he said he had with Weisselberg before the two men marched People's 35 into Trump's office.
Cohen never reimbursed RedFinch for the whole $50,000, he testified.
Finally, let's look at the bottom left section, highlighted in yellow.
"And whose handwriting is at the bottom left and middle?" Hoffinger, the prosecutor, asked Cohen as People's 35 was displayed.
"That's Allen Weisselberg's," Cohen answered.
Weisselberg has been unavailable to testify. He is currently serving a five-month perjury sentence for lying on Trump's behalf at last year's civil fraud trial.
"And how were you able to recognize Allen Weisselberg's handwriting?" the prosecutor asked.
"Well, I recognize the handwriting, but I was also there in the room when he was writing it," Cohen answered.
Weisselberg, in his handwritten note, started with the $180,000 Cohen said Trump owed him.
The CFO underlined the amount. Below that, he wrote, "Grossed up to $360,000."
"He told me what he was going to do was to — it's called 'gross it up,'" Cohen explained to the jury.
Weisselberg's idea — approved by Trump — was to falsely process Cohen's $180,000 reimbursement as legal fees, paid in monthly installments throughout 2017, Trump's first year in office, prosecutors say.
But because Cohen faced a 50% tax penalty on that income, Weisselberg doubled — or "grossed up" — the $180,000, Cohen testified.
"So in order to get back the 180, what he did was, he then wrote down 360,000," Cohen testified. Cohen could then take his 50% tax hit, paying the IRS $180,000 and still pocketing the $180,000 he was due.
Weisselberg tacked on an extra $60,000 year-end bonus, arriving at a grand total of $420,000, Cohen testified, continuing to translate the CFO's handwriting to jurors.
Cohen said he was told the $420,000 should be divided into monthly "retainer" checks of $35,000.
That was bad news for Cohen, who had walked into the meeting with Weisselberg and Trump assuming he'd be reimbursed in one lump sum.
But Trump and Weisselberg had figured it all out in advance, Cohen said he soon realized.
"Did Mr. Weisselberg say in front of Mr. Trump that those monthly payments would be, you know, like a retainer for legal services?" Hoffinger asked Cohen.
"Yes," Cohen answered.
"Did you say something to the effect of, that you had the sense that they had spoken about this previously?" Hoffinger asked.
"Yes," Cohen answered.
"Why do you say that?" the prosecutor asked.
"Because they always played that sort of game — a 'frick and frack' type game," Cohen said.
People's 35 was still displayed on the courtroom's screens, both large and small, as Hoffinger asked what happened when Weisselberg "showed Mr. Trump this document."
"Did Mr. Trump try to renegotiate?" Hoffinger asked.
"No," Cohen answered.
"So he approved it at that point?" the prosecutor asked.
"Yes," Cohen answered.
Closing arguments could come as soon as Tuesday, with jury deliberations starting as early as Thursday. Trump faces anywhere from no jail to four years in prison if convicted of felony falsification of business records.