Trump’s Business Records Trial Resumes with More Witness Testimony

Donald Trump returns to a New York City courtroom Thursday as his business records trial resumes. Testimony is expected from a lawyer who represented two women who allege they had sexual encounters with the former president.

AP reports the testimony from attorney Keith Davidson is seen as a base for the prosecution’s case that Trump and his allies sought to bury unflattering stories in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election.

He is one of multiple key players expected to be called to the stand in advance of prosecutors’ star witness, Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and sometime personal fixer.

Trump has denied all allegations and maintained his innocence throughout while claiming “election interference” for the judicial challenge.

Judge Juan Merchan is also due to consider four more alleged violations of Trump’s gag order Thursday.

This comes after he fined Trump $9,000 for nine breaches on Tuesday and warning the defendant he could face “incarceratory punishment” if he persists in out-of-court commentary, as Breitbart News reported.

Merchan also ordered Trump to remove the “seven offending posts” from Truth Social which he complied with.

During a one-day break from the trial on Wednesday, Trump kept up his condemnation of the case, though stopped short of comments that might exceed the gag order.

“There is no crime,” he told supporters in Waukesha, Wisconsin. “I have a crooked judge, is a totally conflicted judge.”

The trial is now in its second week of testimony as a majority of Americans doubt Trump’s courtroom appearances will conclude with a fair outcome, a CNN poll on Friday found.

Increasing numbers of Americans see the criminal trial of Trump as irrelevant to his fitness for reelection, the CNN poll further found, while only 13 percent believe Trump is being treated the same as other “criminal defendants.”

Only about one-third of American adults believe Trump did anything illegal regarding the case, an AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll found Tuesday.

 The case is New York v. Trump, No. 71543-23, in the New York Supreme Court for New York County.

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