- Michael Cohen was found to have 39,745 contacts stored in his cellphone, said a data analyst.
- Data from Cohen’s phone contained a recorded call discussing a $150,000 payment to Karen McDougal.
- Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer, is set to testify against the former president’s New York trial.
Prosecutors at Donald Trump’s hush money trial wrapped up Thursday’s proceedings with testimony from a digital data analyst who works for the Manhattan District Attorney.
Douglas Daus, testified he had extracted data from two iPhones belonging to Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer, and so-called “fixer”
One device had 39,745 contacts, which Daus described as “unusual.”
“I’ve not seen contacts of that many being on a phone,” he said. Daus, who works in the high technology analysis unit at the New York County District Attorney’s Office, said he had analyzed “maybe thousands” of phones, per the Associated Press.
Hope Hicks, a former advisor to Trump and who testified before the jury on Friday, as well as Trump Organization accountant Allen Weisselberg, First Lady Melania Trump, and Trump himself were all in his phonebook (there were 10 pages of contacts related to Trump) , per Deadline.
One of the phones contained a recording of a September 2016 phone call made by Cohen to his client, Trump, which first became public in 2018. The call was played before the jury.
In the call, Trump can be heard responding to Cohen saying he needed to open a company and that he’s spoken with the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, about how to set the whole thing up. This company was to facilitate the $150,000 payment to Karen McDougal, the former Playboy model who claimed to have had an affair with Trump.
“I need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that information regarding our friend David,” Cohen said, referring to David Pecker, then-CEO of American Media. This tabloid publisher bought McDougal’s story for $150,000, intending to bury it.
Cohen, who is believed to have paid the hush money at the heart of the case, was once a fierce Trump ally. Now, he is an outspoken antagonist of the former president, testifying against him.
Cohen has frequently mocked Trump on his podcast and his account on the social-media site X. But the former fixer said recently that he would gag himself and stop criticizing Trump online and on his podcast until after he had testified.
One of Cohen’s favorite jabs became the subject of more gag-violation arguments at the trial on Thursday.
Trump’s defense attorney, Todd Blanche, complained that Trump had to remain silent about witnesses and jurors while his opponents get to say “anything they want” — citing Cohen, whose favorite insult for the former president is Donald “Von ShitzInPantz.”
Donald ‘Von ShitzInPantz’ has now formally entered the public record.
