While Trump’s campaign was spiralling after a leaked tape caught him bragging about sexually assaulting women, an attorney and tabloid editor brokering deals to keep damaging stories about him out of the press thought his chances of winning the 2016 presidential election were over, his hush money trial heard on Tuesday.

Keith Davidson – a former attorney for adult film star Stormy Daniels who ultimately negotiated the $130,000 sale of her story to Mr Trump’s then-attorney Michael Cohen – testified that interest in his client’s story “reached a crescendo” after the 2005 Access Hollywood tape leaked just weeks before Election Day in 2016.

Here’s more from Alex Woodward, who is covering proceedings for us at Manhattan Criminal Court.

The attorney who represented a former Playboy model who alleged a months-long affair with Donald Trump had offered a “blockbuster” story to a tabloid editor, kicking off negotiations that helped his 2016 campaign bury a potentially embarrassing story in the months before Election Day.

Jurors in the former president’s hush money trial on Tuesday saw a series of text messages between attorney Keith Davidson, who represented Karen McDougal at the time, and then-National Enquirer editor Dylan Howard, who brokered a deal with publisher David Pecker to buy the rights to Ms McDougal’s story for $150,000.

“I have a blockbuster trump [sic] story,” Davidson wrote to Howard on 7 June 2016, according to messages shown in court.

Alex Woodward has the story.

He just will not learn his lesson, will he?

Those posts all popped up on Truth Social yesterday not long after Judge Juan Merchan, who will be considering four more potential gag order violations when court resumes on Thursday, had fined him $9,000 for nine offending social media posts and warned the defendant he could face jail time if he keeps reoffending.

After court, Trump also took the opportunity to claim, yet again, that the E Jean Carroll defamation ruling against him was also bogus because he had never met her, potentially defaming her yet again.

Here’s Alex Woodward’s report on Judge Merchan’s threat.

The criminal defendant and part-time Republican presidential candidate called into Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News last night to denounce the pro-Palestinian protests on America’s college campuses, attacking the demonstrators at Columbia University for damaging the historic Hamilton Hall and praising the New York cops for breaking up their occupation of the building.

He backed the Israeli military response to the Hamas terror attack of 7 October, likening it to the US’s own “War on Terror” in response to 9/11 and insisted: “You have to clean out the cancer.”

You can read Richard Hall’s report on the latest from Columbia below.

In her upcoming book, No Going Back, the Republican governor details how she shot her 14-month-old German wirehaired pointer named Cricket because it was poorly behaved. She then disposed of the dog in a nearby gravel pit.

It is perhaps the only thing that has brought Americans together, as Graig Graziosi reports:

Joe Sommerlad reports:

On the very first day of his criminal trial on Monday 15 April, the Republican presidential candidate emerged from the courtroom to complain to reporters that Judge Juan Merchan would not allow him to be present for the milestone event in his son’s life.

His fury was echoed by members of the conservative media, with Fox News guest Piers Morgan urging the former president to risk jail time rather than miss such an important occasion.

But the judge actually hadn’t said anything of the sort, saying he would rule on whether or not Mr Trump could attend at a later date.

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The first week of testimony at Donald Trump‘s hush money trial was the scene-setter for jurors: Manhattan prosecutors portrayed what they say was an illegal scheme to influence the 2016 presidential campaign by burying negative stories. Now prosecutors are working on filling in the details of how they believe Trump and his allies pulled it off.

Court resumes Tuesday with Gary Farro, a banker who helped Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen open accounts, including one that Cohen used to buy the silence of porn performer Stormy Daniels. She alleged a 2006 sexual encounter with Trump, which he denies.

For his part, the former president and presumptive Republican nominee has been campaigning in his off-hours, but is required to be in court when it is in session, four days a week.

Mr Trump has proudly claimed responsibility for ending the constitutional right to an abortion.

Gustaf Kilander reports:

John Bowden writes:

At the beginning of April, Joe Biden’s campaign manager made a bold proclamation: the state of Florida was winnable for the president in 2024.

Julie Chávez Rodríguez’s claim raised eyebrows for a few reasons: for one, the former president and Biden’s opponent, Donald Trump, is now a permanent resident of the Sunshine State. Then there’s the voter deficit – between 2020 and 2022, the number of voters registered as Democrats in Florida dropped by 331,810. Over that same period, the number of Republican voter registrations in the state increased slightly. Currently, Republicans hold an advantage among active registered voters to the tune of 892,034 registrations.

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Alex Woodward writes:

The last place Donald Trump wants to be is seated at a defence table, muted, in a courtroom in New York City, surrounded by reporters, for six to eight weeks.

A man who is used to spending his days golfing, surrounded by loyalists at his Florida resort, raging at network news, and travelling to makeshift arenas for rallies where his name is everywhere, is instead entering the second week of witness testimony in the first-ever criminal trial of an American president.

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