On the stand today in New York City were two former employees of the Trump

organization. They were involved in the payments that are at the very center of

the charges filed against the former president in his hush money trial.

Jeffrey McConney and Deborah Tarasoff

helped reimburse Mr. Trump's former attorney,

Michael Cohen, for the payments

Cohen made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels during the final days of the 2016 campaign.

The former president also received another fine and a tough warning from the judge in this case who again said if

Trump continues to violate the court's gag order he could face jail time.

Himana Bastio is covering this trial for NPR and she joins us now.

Himena, so nice to see you again.

So today we heard from these two former financial officers of the Trump organization who were part of paying and accounting for these payments to Michael Cohen.

What did we learn today from their testimony?

Right, so the former and current employees of the Trump organization really detailed step by step the process for reviewing vouchers in voices and ultimately cutting checks at the Trump organization.

So we looked at almost all, if not all, of the 34 business records that the prosecution

is alleging that the Trump organization and Trump himself falsified in order to hide the actual reason why he was issuing these payments to then Trump lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen. they really went through the process of how the check gets cut

how it gets invoiced how it got signed by Trump himself and that was a very long lengthy

process that we went through with both of them.

We have heard previous testimony that Donald Trump was aware of payments that were made directly to women to keep their stories quiet.

Did we get any closer to understanding

what Trump did or didn't know about these alleged repayments

of some of that money to Michael Cohen?

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