Trump hush money trial: Judge fines Trump for gag order violations

The defense’s questioning of Gary Farro gave us two things.

First, it showed that their key argument remains that Michael Cohen – the star witness for the prosecution – is unreliable and a difficult man with whom to work.

Second, they seemed committed to making it clear that no one found anything amiss with the hush-money transactions in 2016.

In his cross examination, Blanche got Farro to talk about why the red flags that are now evident in hindsight didn’t come up when Cohen was making these transactions in 2016.

Farro told prosecutors that the bank added layers of scrutiny to certain transactions, but he didn’t see anything particularly unusual about Cohen creating an LLC for a real estate account. In fact, it was fairly typical of Cohen’s business practices.

Cohen’s account didn’t have any of the extra monitoring that one associated with a “politically exposed person” would have, either, Farro said.

And as for those rapid-fire transactions in October 2016 that we now know was a payout to Stormy Daniels? Did any of these transactions raise red flags to you at the time? Blanche asked.

Farro testified they had not.