'Beyond angry': Former Trump confidant testifies financial feud followed hush-money payment

Seated before Donald Trump was a ghost from his past life, an erstwhile ally whose testimony could land him a criminal conviction for old misdeeds.

Seated behind him, in a courtroom, were his present-day allies — elected Republicans, including a potential vice-presidential pick.

Trump's amen corner joined him in the Manhattan courthouse on Monday to offer support during the most critical testimony of the felony criminal case against him.

Michael Cohen walked prosecutors through his decade of service as Trump's legal Mr. Fix It — a solver of problems often tangentially related to his professional title as lawyer.

Most crucially, Cohen is being asked to prove key pillars of the prosecution's case: that Trump knew of payments to conceal his fling with a porn star, that he intended to cover them up and that it was done primarily for electoral reasons.

Early in Monday's testimony, Cohen recalled a head-spinning week in the 2016 presidential election that is at the heart of this case.

He described his reaction when he learned that Stormy Daniels was shopping around her story, just days after the release of an explosive Access Hollywood tape that captured Trump describing crude, unwanted sexual advances against women.

Of the decision to pay $130,000 US to keep Daniels quiet, Cohen said the motivation was politics, not about keeping the news from Trump's wife. "He wasn't thinking about Melania. This was all about the campaign," said Cohen, who summed up his own reaction at the time: "Catastrophic. This is horrible for the campaign."

He recalled Trump's horrified reaction upon hearing, in October 2016, that Daniels was shopping around her story — a subject of old gossip the Trump team thought it had squelched years earlier.

Cohen testified that he remembered Trump telling him: "This is a disaster, a total disaster. Women will hate me. Guys — they'll think it's cool. But this is going to be a disaster for the campaign." He said Trump ordered him to deal with it and make sure it didn't emerge before the election.

That electoral element is fundamental: The only reason this case is being charged as a felony is because prosecutors alleged Trump falsified business records in order to skirt other laws, including a federal campaign-spending law.

Trump and Cohen barely acknowledged each other in the courtroom. It was a rare encounter between two allies who once spoke multiple times a day.

They were so close, in fact, that Cohen testified that he downloaded all of Trump's phone contacts into his own phone, to reach anyone, at any time, at Trump's request.

Cohen described lying for Trump, bullying people and encouraging Trump to run for president in 2012, even creating a now-expired website intended to drum up interest.