Stormy Daniels told a New York court about a hush-money payment at the centre of Donald Trump's first criminal trial, which was paid to her before the 2016 election
The adult-film star also described an alleged sexual encounter with Donald Trump at a golf tournament, which he denies happened
Tensions were high in the courtroom when Judge Merchan asked for the prosecution to cut out explicit questions
Trump's lawyer called for a mistrial over testimony made by Daniels, but that motion was quickly rejected
Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal the payment
Madeline Halpert
Reporting from court
Although the jury has been sent home, the judge has not adjourned court for the day.
Justice Merchan is listening to a request from prosecutors to recall a witness, Georgia Longstreet.
She works for the DA's office and testified last Friday about entering information from Trump's social media posts.
Kayla Epstein
Reporting from court
We've already finished with the defence team's questioning of Tarasoff.
Todd Blanche spent his brief cross-examiniation trying to parse what Tarasoff would and wouldn't have known about the invoice process.
When Trump was in the White House, all she knew to do was send cheques to him via FedEx, Blanche had Tarasoff confirm.
“You don’t know what President Trump did, at the White House or wherever he was, when he signed [the cheques]?” Blanche asks Tarasoff.
No, she responds.
Under his questioning, she testifies that she didn't interact with Trump himself much, even though they worked on the same floor of Trump Tower.
Most of her interactions were with Allen Weisselberg and Jeffrey McConney (the latter of whom we heard from this morning).
Kayla Epstein
Reporting from court
Prosecutors are done with their questioning of Tarasoff.
He cedes the podium to Trump's lead attorney, Todd Blanche, for cross-examination.
Kayla Epstein
Reporting from court
We have fully returned from a brief afternoon recess.
Assistant District Attorney Christopher Conroy has resumed questioning Deborah Tarasoff about the invoices and cheques for Michael Cohen's reimbursements.
Trump himself is watching the evidence flash by on a computer monitor at the defense table.
Right now, he's staring at his jagged, Sharpie-black signature on a cheque made out to Cohen for $35,000.
Image source, ReutersTrump has returned to his seat in the courtroom after the short break.
While outside, he gave a fist pump to watching reporters.
He did not respond when asked about Deborah Tarasoff, the current witness, or whether he signed the cheques at the centre of her testimony and the case.
Kayla Epstein
Reporting from court
We're taking a short break in the courtroom, where we've been hearing from Trump executive Deborah Tarasoff.
She has stressed that she is not calling the shots at the Trump Organization, but her testimony is helping to establish the chain of custody for the reimbursement payments to Michael Cohen and who may have known about them.
Some of the cheques that were paid from Trump's trust were approved by former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg and one of the ex-president's sons - Eric and Donald Trump Jr.
As my colleague Madeline Halpert has noted, Eric Trump happens to be sitting in court right now behind his father. He has seen his signature flash across the the courtroom monitors as cheques he signed are brought up as evidence.
While that provides some intrigue to the proceedings, it is tedious at times.
I saw one of the jurors stifle a yawn and others appear tired. Still, they have kept a close eye on the screens that are displaying the prosecution's evidence.
We'll be back with more testimony shortly.
Madeline Halpert
Reporting from court
We're going through each one of Cohen's reimbursements, which is a similar to the line of questioning we witnessed this morning.
This time, though, we’re looking at ledger entries and cheques instead of invoices from Cohen.
It’s a tedious process, but it will be crucial for prosecutors to prove the first part of their case.
The 34 examples of allegedly false invoices, ledger entries and cheques raised by prosecutors corresponds to the 34 counts of falsifying business records that Trump faces in this case.
The Manhattan district attorneys office alleges that Trump falsified invoices, ledger entries and cheques to make Daniels' hush-money payments appear as legal expenses.
Madeline Halpert
Reporting from court
Image source, EPAWe’re seeing the invoices and billing behind Trump’s reimbursements to Cohen again, though Tarasoff's testimony is providing further context.
Prosecutors have pulled up a cheque to Michael Cohen via Donald Trump’s trust. Tarasoff says two people needed to sign off on the cheque because of the amount - $70,000.
It was signed by Allen Weisselberg and Eric Trump, Tarasoff says.
Worth noting: Eric Trump is sitting in the courtroom's first row, just behind his father, today.
Madeline Halpert
Reporting from court
Prosecutors are working to try to portray Trump as the man who oversaw all the hush-money reimbursements to Cohen.
Conroy asks Tarasoff if Trump was the one to sign cheques for his personal account.
She says, yes.
He asks her if Trump would ever refuse to sign certain cheques.
Tarasoff says yes, and that “he would write void on it and send it back”, she says.
The Trump employee says she could tell it was Trump’s handwriting because “it was signed in Sharpie …. and that’s what he uses” - adetail that elicits some chuckles in the media overflow room.
Kayla Epstein
Reporting from court
Deb Tarasoff is an older woman with short, white hair and a black-and-white checkered shirt.
With her faint New York accent and her quiet demeanour, she looks like your typical grandmother - the kind of longtime employee that’s a staple in the back offices of large companies like the Trump Organization.
While she has plenty of experience in the company's accounting department, she stresses to prosecutor Christopher Conroy that she had little power.
Did she have a lot of decision-making responsibilities, he asks her in a fairly gentle voice?
No, Tarasoff responds.
Did she pretty much follow instructions? Conroy asks.
Yes, she replies.
Madeline Halpert
Reporting from court
Once again today, prosecutors are attempting to tie Trump directly to the hush-money reimbursement.
They are asking Tarasoff who was responsible for approving invoices.
She says former Trump CFO Allen Weisselberg would approve smaller amounts, but cheques larger than $10,000 - like Cohen’s reimbursement - would have to be approved by someone “higher up”.
Tarasoff clarifies this means one of the Trumps - either Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr, or Trump himself.
Earlier, we heard from controller Jeff McConney about forwarding Cohen’s invoices to Tarasoff for processing.
Madeline Halpert
Reporting from court
To start, Tarasoff acknowledges that she still works for the Trump Organization and the company is paying all her legal bills.
She’s been employed there for 24 years, she says, working her way up to become an accounts payable supervisor.
Tarasoff came up in testimony earlier, when former Trump Organization controller Jeff McConney explained who was involved in putting through Trump’s reimbursements of the Stormy Daniels hush-money payments.
The longtime Trump employee testifies that she knew Michael Cohen from his work at the Trump Organization - he sat nearby at the office.
Cohen made the initial hush-money payment, which Trump allegedly reimbursed.
Prosecutors likely aim to use this witness to introduce more evidence about the alleged effort to cover up the hush-money scheme.
Madeline Halpert
Reporting from court
Reporters and spectators are back in court after a lunch break.
We'll hear from a new witness shortly: Deb Tarasoff, a Trump Organization executive who also testified at Trump's tax fraud trial.
As McConney testified earlier, Tarasoff was an accounts payable superviser who processed Michael Cohen's invoices.
This morning was a fairly eventful one for the former president and his ongoing criminal trial. Here's what you may have missed:
We're slated to hear testimony, potentially from a new witness, when court returns from its lunch break.
Stick with us.
Image source, EPA EFEAdult film star Stormy Daniels alleges that she had sex with Donald Trump in 2006 - something he denies - and that she was paid money to stay quiet about it in the lead-up to the 2016 election, which Trump won.
But this case isn't about Daniels or even the act of paying hush-money, really. The trial centres on a reimbursement Trump made to his former personal lawyer and "fixer", Michael Cohen.
Cohen claims he was directed to pay Daniels $130,000 (£104,000) in exchange for her silence about her alleged affair with Trump. Prosecutors have described this as an attempt to "unlawfully influence" the 2016 election.
Hush money payments are not illegal. But the Manhattan District Attorney's Office alleges that Trump committed a crime by improperly recording the money with which he reimbursed Cohen as legal expenses.
In total, he is accused of 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree.
Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for the 2024 election, is legally required to be in court.
He has pleaded not guilty to all the charges, arguing the allegations he faces are not criminal.
Kayla Epstein
Reporting from court
As the court breaks for lunch, here is some of what we learned during McConney's cross-examination.
The questioning by Trump's lawyer Emil Bove lasted less than an hour - compared to the prosecution's questions, which ran for more than two.
His primary strategy was to put distance between Trump himself and all the emails, invoices and bank statements the prosecution asked former controller McConney about. He also sought to undermine McConney's testimony.
It’s important because, to prove the felony, prosecutors must convince the jury that Trump knew about the allegedly falsified records, and falsified them to conceal or commit a second crime.
Some of Bove's points:
Madeline Halpert
Reporting from court
After spending the cross-examination trying to poke holes in the DA's arguments, Trump attorney Emil Bove says he has no further questions.
He tried to draw a distance between Trump and the payments made from his account to Cohen.
He also questioned whether McConney knew what the payments were for. He did not, he replied.
We're now taking our lunch recess.
Madeline Halpert
Reporting from court
Trump attorney Emil Bove is now questioning McConney.
He starts off by trying to distance Trump from the documents that we’ve been seeing this morning.
He asks McConney if Trump ever directly asked him to oversee the reimbursements to Cohen.
“No, he did not,” McConney says.
We heard from McConney earlier that Allen Weisselberg - the former Trump Organization CFO - had given him directions on how to handle the reimbursements, not Trump himself.
Kayla Epstein
Reporting from court
As prosecutors wrapped up their questioning, they went over a government financial disclosure form that Trump was required to provide as president.
The document, bearing Trump's signature, attest that statements in the report are "true, correct, and complete to the best of my knowledge.”
The financial disclosure also contains an aside that in 2016, expenses were incurred by Michael Cohen, and Trump reimbursed him in 2017. The form says they made the disclosure in the interest of transparency.
Madeline Halpert
Reporting from court
McConney is proving to be an important witness for the prosecution, as he can testify to the reimbursements at the centre of prosecutors' case.
Taking the stand today, he stayed calm as he answered hours of questions from prosecutors about details behind the payments.
During his testimony, McConney provided "an understanding of how attentive Trump was when it came to his finances, meaning nothing happened without his knowledge", former Brooklyn prosecutor Julie Rendelman tells me.
But to secure a conviction, she says, prosecutors will need to go one step further.
"The hush-money payments, in and of themselves, are not enough to prove the crime," she says. "The prosecution still must establish the deliberate falsification of the business records and that it was done in furtherance of impacting the election."