Last year, Mr. Cohen said, the president contacted him after The Wall Street Journal first reported the payment to Ms. Daniels.
Mr. Cohen said that he, Mr. Trump and Mr. Weisselberg discussed coordinating a statement that rebutted the report and that asserted that Mr. Cohen had paid Ms. Daniels on his own. He also described receiving a phone call that same month from Mr. Trump during an interview with Vanity Fair in which, Mr. Cohen said, the president directed him to tell the reporter that Mr. Trump had no knowledge of his dealings with Ms. Daniels.
Separately, Mr. Cohen said one of his greatest misgivings surrounding the hush money involved the first lady, Melania Trump. Mr. Cohen said Mr. Trump told him to lie to Ms. Trump about the payment.
“He asked me to pay off an adult film star with whom he had an affair, and to lie to his wife about it, which I did,” he said in his opening remarks. “Lying to the first lady is one of my biggest regrets.”
Mr. Cohen, who had worked for a decade at the Trump family business, also offered the clearest suggestion yet that Mr. Weisselberg, a stalwart of the company, was a key figure behind the effort to conceal the hush money. The executive has been a focus for several months of an investigation by federal prosecutors in New York, according to people briefed on the matter.
Mr. Cohen suggested that the president and Mr. Weisselberg were mindful of the political and legal tightrope they were walking. He described a meeting he attended with Mr. Trump and Mr. Weisselberg in which Mr. Trump ordered the payment. After the meeting, Mr. Cohen said, he and Mr. Weisselberg debated the best way to pay Ms. Daniels — and then decided to disguise the reimbursement from Mr. Trump to Mr. Cohen by breaking it up into monthly installments.
“I had asked Allen to use his money — I didn’t want to use mine — and he said he couldn’t,” Mr. Cohen testified. “He asked me if I knew anybody who wanted to have a party at one of his clubs,” he said, suggesting that the event could have provided an alternate justification for forwarding the funds. “I didn’t.”
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