But the courtroom has already heard, from old friends and former employees, about the way Trump’s tendencies informed the culture of his company, the Trump Organisation, where he first honed his management style.
Like a family business
Hope Hicks, a former spokesperson for Trump, described it in her testimony as a “very big and successful company”. But she noted that it was “really run like a small family business”.
“Everybody that works there,” she said, “in some sense reports to Mr Trump”.
Tarasoff’s former manager, Jeffrey McConney, told a story that may have pleased prosecutors. He said that early in his career at the Trump Organisation, he had walked into the boss’ office and Trump – in the midst of a phone conversation – had told him: “You’re fired”.
Once off the phone, McConney said, Trump had taken it back. But he had warned his new employee to watch the accounts closely, noting that the “cash balances went down last week”.
“He said, ‘Now focus on my bills’,” McConney recalled. “It was a teaching moment. Just because somebody is asking for money, negotiate with them, talk to them.” Don’t just hand the money over “mindlessly”.
McConney’s testimony was corroborated by an unusual witness: a past version of Trump himself.
Sally Franklin, a top editor for Penguin Random House, was called to the witness stand to read aloud passages from two of Trump’s books in which he described himself as a fastidious custodian monitoring the minutiae of his business.
“I always sign my cheques, so I know where my money’s going,” he wrote in one of the excerpts read aloud in court. In another, Trump boasted of cashing a cheque for 50¢, sent by Spy magazine as a prank. (The magazine sent Trump minuscule cheques in decreasing amounts, the lowest being 13¢; none was for 50¢.)
“They may call that cheap; I call it watching the bottom line,” he wrote in the book. “Every dollar counts in business, and for that matter, every dime. Penny pinching? You bet. I’m all for it.”
Prosecutors hope that it will be hard to imagine that author parting with $US420,000 without good reason.
All the small things
In interviews, former aides said that while Trump’s focus did not apply to everything, he was attuned to any element of his business or persona that the public might see, from visuals to advertising copy to press statements.
Jack O’Donnell, a former Trump casino executive, recalled Trump, late one night, admonishing a maintenance worker who was polishing the marble floors at one of the casinos – Trump told the worker he was using the wrong chemical. Alan Marcus, a former consultant for the Trump Organisation, described Trump providing feedback on the language of a television commercial opposing a tunnel project by a casino rival in Atlantic City, and on taking the spots down when they became controversial.
Barbara Res, a former top Trump Organisation executive who oversaw some of Trump’s most prominent construction projects, including Trump Tower, said that the boss didn’t have any real knowledge of high-rise construction before that project. But she said that when it came to specific superficial details, he often sought to impose his will.
That included insisting, despite building code requirements, that he didn’t want buttons in Braille in his elevators. “He said, ‘We won’t have handicapped people living in Trump Tower, so we don’t need that’,” she recalled. The architect working on the project overruled him.
Trump himself described this tendency in another book excerpt read in court, writing: “When you are working with a decorator, make sure you ask to see all of the invoices. Decorators are by nature honest people, but you should be double-checking regardless.”
Res described a culture where Trump’s desires were so well known that people would often do things to please him without him saying a word, paraphrasing a version of what Cohen has said.
“We knew Trump so well, he didn’t have to say anything, we knew what he wanted,” Res said. “I never did anything illegal and I stopped him from demolishing a building without a permit. But others did.”
There have also been indications during the trial of Trump’s tendency to insert himself – to micromanage – when the stakes are high. Hicks told a story that hinted at her former boss’s interest in the co-ordination of hush-money payments, even if he did not deign to involve himself directly.
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At that time, Trump, famously, did not text. But Hicks did. On the stand, she described a text message that she had sent to Cohen on November 5, 2016, days before the presidential election. Something had prompted her to ask Cohen for Pecker’s phone number – despite already having contact information for the publisher.
“I have it,” she told Cohen apologetically. “But Mr Trump thinks it’s the wrong number.”
Source Agencies
