Prosecutors in former President Donald Trump's New York trial started with a bang, calling as their first witness David Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer. And that makes sense. In a jury trial, the focuses are primacy and recency: Prosecutors want to start strong and end strong. The beginnings of trials and the ends of trials are what jurors remember best. That's why a good strategy is to call witnesses such as Gary Farro to the stand in between.
Farro spent 15 years at First Republic Bank as a senior managing director. He began his testimony last week as the third witness for the Manhattan district attorney's office. Farro explained that he inherited the bank's relationship with Michael Cohen, who had several personal accounts at the bank. He testified that Cohen contacted him in October 2016 to open a new account at First Republic for a real estate consulting LLC (limited liability company) that Cohen created called Essential Consultants LLC. Interestingly, according to Farro's testimony, Cohen specified that he didn't want an address to appear on any of the checks for that account. That Delaware LLC was the vehicle used to pay Stephanie Clifford, aka Stormy Daniels, the $130,000 hush money payment heard around the world.
This is a preview of Katie Phang's latest article. Read the full column here.
