Welcome to the news hour. On the stand today for the fourth week of testimony and

Donald Trump's hush money trial was the prosecution's star witness Michael Cohen.

Trump's former attorney and fixer implicated Trump,

testifying that Trump directed Cohen

to pay adult film actress Stormy Daniels

to bury her story on the eve of the 2016 election

and was then involved in the cover-up of those

payments after he won. William Bringham was in court today in New York and he

joins us now. So William, it's fair to say Mr Cohen is arguably the most important witness for the Manhattan District

attorney in this case. This is the man allegedly at the center of those hush money payments

and reimbursements. What did he testify to today?

That's exactly right.

Aumna, prosecutors needed Michael Cohen to do basically two things today.

First, as you were describing, established that Donald Trump directed

Michael Cohen to pay Storm McDaniel's to be quiet so that she wouldn't spill her story and

hurt Trump's chances to win the 2016 election. And then second, to

clearly implicate Trump in the scheme that prosecutors allege that they cooked

up to falsify business records to then cover up the

repayment of that money that Cohen paid to Stormy Daniels. And on both those

fronts Cohen delivered somewhat dry but pretty compelling testimony

on both of those fronts.

So let's take each of those in turn then.

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