Trump criminal trial wraps for the day after opening statements and first witness

Through the payments, Donald Trump "intended that nobody learn about the Stormy Daniels payoff," prosecutor Matthew Colangelo said.

Prosecutor Matthew Colangelo said that when it came time for Donald Trump to pay Michael Cohen back for the "catch and kill deal" involving Stormy Daniels, "you’ll see he didn’t negotiate the price down. He doubled it. And he doubled it so they could disguise it as income."

Colangelo noted that Trump, Cohen and Allen Weisselberg agreed that Cohen would be paid back in monthly installments by sending fake invoices to the Trump Org each month.

It was a "clever way to pay Cohen back without being too obvious about it," the prosecutor told the jury.

The repayment to Cohen, as recorded in the business records, was "a double lie" because there was no retainer agreement and Cohen was not getting paid for legal services in 2017.

Here are key things to know about Cohen, and his role in the case:

Prosecutor Matthew Colangelo is walking the jury through the $130,000 payment Trump made to Michael Cohen, and how they reached that number by including funds for taxes because the money was being listed as income and not as a reimbursement.

He notes former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg wrote down all of these figures in the Cohen repayment.

Jurors will see in Weisselberg's handwriting how they calculated Cohen's reimbursement payments. Weisselberg's notes show that it was "a grossed up way to disguise” the payment, Colaneglo said.

Colangelo said jurors will see, "Donald Trump was a very frugal business man who believed in pinching pennies."

In his opening statement on Monday, prosecutor Matthew Colangelo sought to reframe the case against Donald Trump - saying it was about much more than the hush money he allegedly paid to cover up negative information about him.

Instead, Colangelo said, Trump, along with his attorney Michael Cohen and David Pecker, the former chairman of the National Enquirer’s parent company AMI, “formed a conspiracy … to influence the presidential election.”

“The defendant, Donald Trump, orchestrated a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election,” the prosecutor said. “Then he covered up that criminal conspiracy by lying in his New York business records over and over and over again."

“It was election fraud, pure and simple,” Colangelo told the jury.

The scheme was three-pronged, Colangelo said: the trio sought to help Trump kill negative stories about Trump - a process known as “catch-and-kill” - publish favorable stories about Trump and publish negative stories about Trump’s political opponents.

He laid out three different instances where the trio allegedly conspired to prevent harmful information about Trump from becoming public prior to the 2016 election.

The first, prosecutors said, was a $30,000 payment to a former Trump Tower doorman who alleged Trump fathered a child - an allegation that ended up not being true: “It was the first time that David Pecker had ever paid anyone for information about Donald Trump,” Colangelo said.

Pecker, the prosecutor said, was “not acting as a publisher. He was acting as a co-conspirator.” Even after the allegation was determined to be false, Cohen instructed the Enquirer’s parent company not to release the doorman from a non-disclosure agreement until after the presidential election.

The second catch-and-kill deal involved Karen McDougal, who alleged she had an affair with Trump. Trump, Colangelo said, “desperately did not want this information about Karen McDougal to become public because he was concerned about the election.” AMI paid McDougal $150,000 for the rights to her story, the prosecutor said.

"The real reason Pecker directed AMI to make this payment to McDougal was to make sure she didn’t publicize" her account of her affair with Trump before the 2016 election, Colangelo says.

The third alleged instance involved the much-publicized payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, who said she also had an affair with Trump. Trump has denied both affairs with McDougal and Daniels.

“Another story about sexual infidelity, especially with a porn star, on the heels of the Access Hollywood tape would have been devastating to his campaign,” Colangelo told the jury. “So at Trump’s direction, Cohen negotiated the deal to buy Daniels’ story," and prevent it from becoming public before the election.

Prosecutor Matthew Colaneglo described how on Election Night in 2016, as news outlets got closer to announcing Donald Trump as president, the lawyer who cut deals for Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels, Keith Davidson, texted National Enquirer editor-in-chief Dylan Howard: "What have we done?"

Prosecutor Matthew Colaneglo said after the "Access Hollywood" tape surfaced an adult film star alleged she had an extramarital affair with Donald Trump.

“That woman was an adult film actress, a porn star named Stormy Daniels," he says.

David Pecker, then-chairman and CEO of American Media Inc., was never paid back for the doorman or the model and actress Karen McDougal deals but he was willing to help as long as someone else put up the money.

Cohen's hope was to delay payment to Daniels until after the election and then not pay at all. But Daniels and her lawyer realized they were being strung along, Colangelo said.

Donald Trump didn’t want to write a check himself to make the $130,000 payment, so he asked Michel Cohen and Allen Weisselberg to “figure out some other way” to make the payment, prosecutor Matthew Colangelo said in his opening statement.

"Before putting up his own money Cohen confirmed with Trump that Trump would pay him back," Colangelo said.

At Trump’s request, Colangelo noted, Cohen agreed to use out his own money to "keep Stormy Daniels quiet" two weeks before the 2016 election.

Donald Trump's campaign went into "damage control mode" following the release of the "Access Hollywood" tape and initially described it as "locker room talk," Prosecutor Matthew Colangelo explained.

Colangelo said Trump's campaign insiders were concerned Trump's words were caught on video.

As prosecutor Matthew Colangelo talks about the "Access Hollywood" tape" in his opening statement, Trump passed a note to his attorney Emil Bove.

Trump also whispered to his attorney Todd Blanche.