Former President Donald Trump speaks to media as he returns to his trial on the Manhattan Legal Court docket, Friday, Might 3, 2024, in New York. Related Press

NEW YORK — Prosecutors in Donald Trump’s hush cash trial are transferring deeper into his orbit following an inside-the-room account concerning the former president’s response to a politically damaging recording that surfaced within the last weeks of the 2016 marketing campaign.

Hope Hicks, a former White Home official and for years a high aide, is by far the closest Trump affiliate to have taken the witness stand within the Manhattan trial.

Her testimony Friday was designed to present jurors an insider’s view of a chaotic and pivotal stretch within the marketing campaign, when a 2005 recording displaying Trump speaking about grabbing ladies with out their permission was made public and when he and his allies sought to forestall the discharge of different probably embarrassing tales. That effort, prosecutors say, included hush cash funds to a porn actor and Playboy mannequin who each have mentioned they’d sexual encounters with Trump earlier than he entered politics.

READ: Prosecutors at Donald Trump’s hush cash trial zero in on particulars

“I had sense to imagine this was going to be an enormous story and that it was going to dominate the information cycle for the subsequent a number of days,” Hicks mentioned of the “Entry Hollywood” recording, first revealed in an October 2016 Washington Publish story. “This was a harmful improvement.”

The trial enters its third week of testimony Monday with prosecutors constructing towards their star witness, Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and private fixer who pleaded responsible to federal fees associated to the hush cash funds. Cohen is predicted to bear a bruising cross-examination from protection attorneys searching for to undermine his credibility with jurors.

Trump faces 34 felony counts of falsifying enterprise information in reference to funds made to stifle probably embarrassing tales. Prosecutors say Trump’s firm, the Trump Group, reimbursed Cohen for funds to porn actor Stormy Daniels and gave Cohen bonuses and further funds. Prosecutors allege that these transactions have been falsely logged in firm information as authorized bills.

READ: Trump calls choose ‘crooked’ after dealing with a warning of jail time

Trump has pleaded not responsible and denied sexual encounters with any of the ladies, in addition to any wrongdoing.

Up to now, jurors have heard from witnesses together with a tabloid journal writer and Trump pal who purchased the rights to a number of sordid tales about Trump to forestall them from popping out and a Los Angeles lawyer who negotiated hush cash offers on behalf of each Daniels and Playboy mannequin Karen McDougal.

Trump’s attorneys have tried to chip away on the prosecution’s idea of the case and the credibility of some witnesses. They’ve raised questions throughout cross-examinations about whether or not Trump was presumably a goal of extortion, pressured to rearrange payouts to suppress dangerous tales and spare his household embarrassment and ache. Prosecutors preserve the funds have been about preserving his political viability as he sought the presidency.

The case is one among 4 Trump prosecutions and presumably the one one that can attain trial earlier than the November election. Different felony indictments cost him with plotting to subvert the 2020 presidential election after he misplaced to Democrat Joe Biden and illegally hoarding categorized paperwork after he left the White Home.