'Juicy set of' bank documents shed major light on Trump hush money trial: FOIA release

During seven hours of testimony that ended on Thursday, adult film star Stormy Daniels detailed a sexual encounter with Donald Trump in 2006 and hush money payments that were made to her a decade later during the 2016 presidential race.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg Jr. and his team of prosecutors allege that in 2016, Trump falsified business records to make those payments and influence the outcome of the election.

The day after Daniels' testimony concluded, Bloomberg News' Jason Leopold reported that the FBI had sent him a "juicy set of documents that's directly related to" the trial.

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"They're business records from First Republic Bank, where Trump's former attorney Michael Cohen opened an account to pay off adult film star Stormy Daniels," Leopold explains in his May 10 reporting. "The details around the bank activity have been widely reported, but many of the underlying financial documents haven't surfaced. And since cameras aren't allowed in the courtroom, the public largely hasn't seen the evidence at the center of the trial — until now."

Cohen, according to NBC News and MSNBC, is expected to testify in the trial this Monday, May 13. Like Daniels and former National Enquirer Publisher David Pecker, Cohen is a star witness for the prosecution.

Leopold notes that in 2019, he filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the FBI — and he is "now in possession of 25-pages of" Cohen's "supplemental interview material."

"The contents are newsworthy, to say the least," Leopold reports. "Last week, as part of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's case against Trump, Cohen's First Republic Bank records were front and center during witness testimony. Prosecutors showed them to jurors as they described how Cohen set up a bank account just weeks before the 2016 presidential election, under a shell company named Essential Consultants LLC."

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Leopold continues, "He did so after Trump directed him to pay Daniels $130,000 in exchange for her silence about their alleged affair, which Trump has denied. Gary Farro, then a managing director at First Republic Bank and Cohen's banker, testified for two days about setting up Essential Consultants for Cohen and the paper trail associated with it, which I'm sharing here."

The Bloomberg News reporter goes on to describe the specific documents he has obtained.

Leopold explains, "The first document identifies the various accounts where Cohen was listed as the primary account holder: checking accounts, a home equity line of credit, or HELOC, and a couple of homes…. The second document is the signature card agreement authorizing First Republic to open an account for Essential Consultants, where Cohen is listed as the only signatory. It's dated October 26, 2016, one day before the $130,000 hush money payment was wired to Daniels."

The journalist adds, "The third and fourth documents are the certificates of formation acknowledging that Essential Consultants was set up as an LLC in Delaware. It's dated October 17, 2016, 10 days before Daniels was paid, and was signed by Cohen…. The fifth document is a 'know your customer' form, or KYC."