During their redirect, prosecutors have Franklin read another excerpt from one of Trump’s books about signing cheques (or “checks” in the US).
“I even try to sign as many checks as possible,” Trump writes.
“When you sign a check yourself, you’re seeing what’s really going inside the business,” the passage continues, “and if people see your signature at the bottom of the check, they know you’re watching them.”
Why does this matter? Yesterday the prosecutors showed a series of cheques to Michael Cohen, reimbursing him for the hush money payment to Stormy Daniels, that bore Trump’s trademark Sharpie signature.
Cohen filed his invoices as “legal expenses”, which wasn’t true.
Prosecutors need to prove that Trump knew what those payments to Cohen were truly for when he was signing the cheques, so they may be using this testimony to show he cared about the details of such transactions.