As The Trump Trial Reaches Its Final Stages, A Look Back At How We Got Here

This article is part of HuffPost’s biweekly politics newsletter. , according to testimony from her attorney at the time, Keith Davidson.

Backlash to the “Access Hollywood” tape shows the numbing effect the steady stream of subsequent Trump scandals has had on the American public over the years. In early October 2016, Trump’s “grab ’em by the pussy” quote nearly derailed his campaign. Hope Hicks, Trump’s former campaign spokesperson, testified about the fear that struck the campaign after the tape was publicized.

It was Melania Trump who told her husband that he should respond by saying his comments were akin to “locker room talk,” according to testimony from Cohen, who helped fill in more details on what was allegedly going on behind the scenes.

“This is a disaster. A total disaster. Women are going to hate me,” Cohen recalled Trump saying.

Prosecutors stressed the “Access Hollywood” backlash to explain why Trump needed to secure Daniels’ silence. An alleged affair with a porn actor, at a time when Trump was married with a young child, would invite further waves of criticism when his campaign was already drowning.

On the stand, Cohen explained how he handled the matter: He took out a home equity line of credit to avoid withdrawing the hush money sum from the bank account that his wife monitored, set up a shell company and funneled $130,000 to Daniels through Davidson.

Trump then allegedly repaid Cohen over the course of 2017 with monthly checks, which he signed himself in the Oval Office. The checks are the heart of the prosecution’s case; along with invoices and other statements, they represent the business documents he is accused of falsifying because they were labeled as payment for Cohen’s legal services, rather than reimbursements for hush money. The sum Cohen was refunded included other expenses and was “grossed up” to account for taxes, coming to a total of $420,000.

Prosecutors called witnesses who could speak to the checks’ journey from conception to delivery — former White House staffers and Trump Organization employees.

To battle the defense team’s suggestion that Trump was simply unaware of the repayments, prosecutors entered into evidence snippets from Trump’s various books in which he stresses the importance of keeping a watchful eye over every penny spent. Representatives from the companies that published Trump’s books were subpoenaed to help prosecutors because of a rule that requires evidence to be entered through a witness. An archivist from C-SPAN was required to fly in from Indiana to help the prosecutors enter other evidence. Ditto a transcription company representative from Texas.

At every turn, Trump’s team has sought to discredit the prosecution’s witnesses and cast doubt on their evidence. They hit particularly hard on Cohen and Daniels, each of whom’s testimony provided some of the trial’s most riveting moments. Daniels, for example, shared details about her alleged 2006 sexual experience with Trump at a Lake Tahoe hotel room — sometimes too many details.

Trump attorney Susan Necheles attempted to shame Daniels for what her client says is a false story, telling her at one point, “You have a lot of experience making phony stories about sex.” (In addition to acting, Daniels also writes and directs porn films.) Trump attorney Todd Blanche used the word “lie” every chance he got during his cross-examination of Cohen, who has admitted to telling lies on behalf of Trump in the past and served prison time for lying to Congress.

As the prosecution’s last witness, and having been so close to Trump, Cohen’s testimony served to fill in the gaps that remained in the prosecution’s version of events. They used extensive phone logs, text messages and email records to illustrate how Cohen was allegedly acting at Trump’s direction — not going rogue, as the defense suggested.

The prosecution team rested their case on Monday. By noon Tuesday, the defense had also rested, calling just two witnesses in an attempt to reshape the jury’s view of Cohen as a liar. One, a paralegal, introduced his own chart showing call logs between Cohen and a Trump-allied lawyer, Robert Costello. The other was Costello himself, whose antics on the stand drew an angry response from Merchan. While Cohen met with Costello while he figured out whether to cooperate with federal prosecutors in 2018, he did not hire Costello, testifying that he could not trust him. The overall effect was to suggest Cohen had a cozier relationship with the lawyer than he’d let on, and that Cohen was capable of acting erratically.

Notably absent from the witness stand throughout all of the proceedings was one man — Trump himself. Despite repeatedly claiming that he would, the former president never testified in his own defense.