Witness Gary Farro, a former senior managing director at First Republic Bank, is back on the stand to testify about his time working with Donald Trump's former personal attorney, Michael Cohen.
Farro worked at First Republic Bank when Cohen used his home equity line from the bank to pay the $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels, which is at the center of the hush money case.
Cohen's then lawyer Michael Avenatti provided an email to CNN in 2018 that showed a First Republic Bank employee confirming the deposit to Cohen, who used his personal and trumporg.com email accounts.The bank employee who confirmed the deposit was an assistant to Farro, according to NBC News.
Farro’s testimony Tuesday is expected to get into the documents that underly the paper trial tied to the 34 counts of falsifying business records Trump faces. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges and denies the alleged affairs.
What Farro said Friday: When Farro took the stand as prosecutors’ third witness, jurors saw the paper trail for a shell company and corresponding bank account Cohen created in Delaware that was meant to be used to pay AMI for the rights to Karen McDougal’s story – a transaction that never transpired. That account was ultimately never funded, according to the banker’s testimony.
Farro testified to records that show Cohen changed course about two weeks later in October 2016 to instead open an account for another company – Essential Consultants – an entity ultimately used to pay Daniels in the hush money scheme to suppress her story about an alleged affair with Trump.
CNN's Kaanita Iyer contributed reporting to this post.
