Inside the Trump grand jury room — '40s-era furniture, linoleum-topped desks, and a looming indictment

• Michael Cohen has signaled he is testifying Monday before the Trump hush-money grand jury.
• His testimony caps 2 months of evidence alleging Trump falsified documents to silence Stormy Daniels.
• Cohen's testimony could take days; a vote on a felony indictment of Trump could follow quickly.

There are no gold-plated fixtures in the room where 23 Manhattan residents may soon make history.

Instead, the grand jury room where Donald Trump could become the first former president to be criminally indicted is a drab, un-Trumplike space, seemingly too ordinary for its purpose.

"They're not enjoying the beautiful skyline," a former prosecutor said, describing to Insider the sunless room on the fourth floor of a Lower Manhattan office building, where grand jurors sit in ascending, stepped rows behind white, linoleum-topped desks, as if in a 1940s-era lecture room.

Michael Cohen has signaled that he will begin his testimony on Monday in this somewhat shabby room, facing these rows of grand jurors, as the secret proceeding nears its conclusion. 

Cohen will sit behind a small table and describe how Trump, his boss for a decade, allegedly lied on paper to hide a $130,000 campaign expenditure — a "hush money" payment made just two weeks before the 2016 presidential election.

The money silenced adult film actress Stormy Daniels, who was poised to throw a stink bomb that could have altered the election. She was threatening to go public with allegations that she had slept with the future president back in 2006, just one year after his marriage to Melania Trump, and four months after the birth of their son, Barron.

On Saturday, Cohen retweeted an Associated Press story confirming that Monday is the day he'll begin to describe Trump's role in this sordid tale to a room full of Manhattan residents who could vote an indictment as early as this week.

—Michael Cohen (@MichaelCohen212) March 11, 2023

On Friday, there were more signals: promises by Cohen and his attorney, Lanny Davis, that they will no longer stop to chat with the small press corps that has staked out their half-dozen previous meetings with prosecutors since mid-January.

"I'm really going to be taking a little time, now, to stay silent, and allow the DA to build their case and to do things that they need to do," the normally garrulous Cohen said, indicating the heightened stakes.

—Laura Italiano (@Italiano_Laura) March 11, 2023

Cohen may need multiple half-days to fully testify. But he'll begin each session in the same way, says former prosecutor Diana Florence.

He'll sit on a very old piece of Manhattan district attorney office furniture, very likely an 80-year-old, barrel-backed wooden chair, as he waits to be called into the grand jury room, Florence says, describing the typical furnishings.

She knows well the process, the surroundings, that unforgiving seating.

Florence, now a defense lawyer in private practice, estimates that in her 25-year career prosecuting major white collar crimes she has presented some 200 cases in that same grand jury room.

After each presentation, she'd wait, seated on one of those same chairs, as grand jurors deliberated behind closed doors. She'd listen for hours for the buzzer that signals an indictment.

"It's like a sad office waiting area" adjacent to the jury room itself, Florence told Insider on Sunday of the small anteroom where Cohen will likely wait for a court officer to tell him it's time to testify.

"There'll be, like, old Time magazines," she said. "Newspapers. And it hasn't been painted, you know, probably since 'Friends' was on television.

"It's really depressing," she added. "There's lots of those brown, wooden chairs. I can't recall it being renovated during my time" with the DA's office, said Florence, who left the office two years ago.

Cohen likely received a subpoena compelling him to testify, Florence said, though that would be just a formality. Cohen has been eager, he has said, to help Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

Like former Trump advisors Hope Hicks and Kellyanne Conway, who also visited the building recently, likely also appearing before the grand jury, Cohen will have immunity as he describes his admitted role as the hush-money payment's "bag man."

When his wait is over, and they're ready for him inside, Cohen will be escorted into the grand jury room by a court officer, leaving his lawyer behind in the grim waiting room, Florence predicts.

There, he will take his place behind the long side of a rectangular table, standing and facing the rows of grand jurors.

On the end of the table to his right, a stenographer will already be seated. On the right end of the table, the lead prosecutor will be standing at a tabletop lecturn. Given the importance of the case, additional prosecutors may also be in the room. As prescribed by state law, there is no judge present.

The jury foreperson will ask Cohen to raise his right hand and swear to tell the truth.

"Then he sits down, and the prosecutor starts their questioning," Florence explains, "and the questioning is like any direct examination you've seen a million times in any trial."

If the grand jurors look up from their spiral-bound notebooks, and if their eyes wander away from the testifying witness and the documents projected on an overhead screen, the skyscrapers of Lower Manhattan will not distract them.

Two windows to the grand jurors' left overlook a concrete courtyard filled with maintenance equipment.

Cohen's initial testimony could last for several days.

He knows the documents and chronologies well, having described the hush-money case and other alleged Trump financial improprieties to two Manhattan district attorneys (the investigation began some five years ago, under former DA Cyrus Vance), as well as to federal prosecutors, and the state attorney general's office.

He also was a key player. According to "People Vs. Donald Trump," the recent book by the DA probe's former lead prosecutor,  Mark Pomerantz, Cohen has told prosecutors he masterminded the hush-money scheme from its beginning.

It was Cohen who brokered the deal to pay Daniels through her lawyer, and Cohen who set up the non-disclosure contract between Trump and the actress, a secret document in which the two parties were listed only by pseudonyms, with "Peggy Peterson" promising not to disclose any details about "David Dennison."

In the 2018 federal case against Cohen, he admitted wiring the $130,000 to Daniels' lawyer at 9:47 on the morning of October 27, 2016, days before the election. Everything he did, Cohen has sworn to federal and state prosecutors, and to Congress, was at Trump's direction.

After Cohen, guided step-by-step by a prosecutor, describes this chronology and shows his documentation,"the prosecutor says to the grand jury, 'I have no further questions for this witness. Does the grand jury have any questions,'" Florence explains. 

"And so then they raise their hands, and then the prosecutor, kind of like Oprah, will go into the audience, and say, 'Grand juror number three? What is your question?'" 

The grand juror will then pose to the prosecutor — not directly to Cohen — the question they want him to answer.

"Grand jurors sometimes asked questions that are completely the best question ever, and I would say 'Oh my gosh, I wish I had thought of that.'

"And then sometimes they ask things that are completely off, completely irrelevant, and you as the prosecutor have to tell the grand juror, 'I can't ask the witness where he got his tie. Do you have a question that's relevant?'" 

The prosecutor will rephrase a question that is argumentative or otherwise improper, for example if a grand juror wants to ask Cohen, a vocal Trump critic, if he is "out to get" the former president.

"What I would probably say to the grand juror, if they asked something like that, is, 'Look, I hear what you're saying. What you're curious about is his motive to lie. So what if I ask the question this other way?'

The grand jurors are a cross-section of Manhattan, Florence says.

"It's like a subway car. You have all races, all genders, all classes, and they're all thrown together, because it's really hard to get out of grand jury duty," she says. "And yes, sometimes there are people who will drive the other 22 grand jurors crazy with off-the-wall questions." 

When all the questioning is over, the prosecutor tells the grand jury that the presentation of evidence has concluded. The prosecutor then begins the "charging" process, telling the grand jurors what charges the district attorney is seeking, explaining the circumstance and evidence for each one. 

Then the prosecutor gives the grand jury a paper list of the charges — a "charge sheet," with space to tally the number of votes for each count — and leaves the room, as does the court officer and stenographer.

The grand jurors then deliberate, vote, and fill out the charge sheet alone, in secret.

There needs to be at least 16 grand jurors present out of the originally selected 23 to have a voting quorum. A majority of 12 grand jurors must find there is reasonable cause to believe the accused person committed a crime, a standard lower than proof beyond a reasonable doubt, which is necessary to find them guilty.

The prosecutor, meanwhile, will sit on that old, uncomfortable wooden chair just outside the grand jury room, and wait for the buzzer.

"One buzz is they're done voting, two buzzes is they have a question to ask the prosecutor. Or they can buzz twice and say, 'Hey, we want to hear from Michael Cohen again.'"