In an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Monday, Donald Trump’s attorney Joe Tacopina said that the former president has “no plans” to testify before a Manhattan grand jury probing alleged hush money payments made to an adult film actress during his 2016 campaign.
“We have no plans on participating in that proceeding,” Tacopina told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos in an interview Monday. “It’s a decision that needs to be made still, there’s been no deadline set, so we’ll wait and see.”
Prosecutors invited Trump to testify before the grand jury last week, which comes at a crucial juncture in the probe; the Manhattan district attorney’s office is closing in on a decision on whether to seek charges against Trump.
Trump’s former personal attorney and fixer Michael Cohen was set to testify before the panel on Monday.
Cohen served prison time after pleading guilty in 2018 to federal charges, including campaign finance violations, for arranging the payouts to porn actor Stormy Daniels and model Karen McDougal to keep them from going public. He has also been disbarred.
Cohen is likely to provide critical details about whatever involvement the Republican presidential candidate may have had in the payments, made in the final weeks of the 2016 campaign, to two women who alleged affairs with him.
Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 through his own company and was then reimbursed by Trump, whose company logged the reimbursements as “legal expenses.”
McDougal’s $150,000 payment was made through the publisher of the National Enquirer, which squelched her story in a journalistically dubious practice known as “catch-and-kill.”
According to federal prosecutors who charged Cohen, the Trump Organization then “grossed up” Cohen’s reimbursement for the Daniels payment for “tax purposes," giving him $360,000 plus a $60,000 bonus, for a total of $420,000.
Trump has denied any wrongdoing in the case and rebuffed allegations of extramarital affairs, blasting the probe as a “political Witch-Hunt” on his Truth Social platform.
“Scam, Injustice, Mockery, and Complete and Total Weaponization of Law Enforcement in order to affect a Presidential Election,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Tacopina told Stephanopoulos that Susan Necheles, another attorney for the former president, has met with prosecutors.
When asked if he expects an indictment, Tacopina replied, “I expect justice to prevail, and if that’s the case … this shouldn’t be an indictment.”
Tacopina railed against the investigation, accusing the Manhattan district attorney’s office of engaging in a “blatant and unconstitutional” attempt to hinder Trump’s prospects in next year’s election. Earlier Monday, Tacopina shared a letter sent to Jocelyn Strauber, Commissioner of the NYC Department of Investigation, asking her to open an independent probe into the Manhattan DA's office over what he called “patently political prosecution.”
“This case is outrageous, really,” Tacopina told ABC News. “There should be a healthy dose of disgust from the [Bar Association], the legal community, prosecutors, defense lawyers alike.
“It’s not what we do, this is not what we do,” he continued. “We are distorting laws to try and bag President Trump. I don’t know if it’s because he’s leading in the polls, I don’t know what it is, but this prosecutor and this prosecutor’s office has made an agenda. They have scoured his personal life and business life for seven years to try to find something.”
When asked if Trump authorized the payment to Daniels, if the payment was properly recorded and if it was connected to the 2016 election, Tacopina replied to the latter: "It’s not directly related."
"It's not directly related to the campaign," Tacopina replied, while Stephanopoulos pressed him on if Trump authorized the payments.
“Let’s assume he did, for this argument,” the attorney said. “This was a plain extortion. I don’t know when we started prosecuting extortion victims. He has vehemently denied this affair. But he had to pay money because there was going to be an allegation that was going to be publicly embarrassing to him, regardless of the campaign.”
Circling back to whether or not the payment was properly recorded, Tacopina later replied: "There was absolutely no false records made, to my knowledge there was no false records made."
"I wasn't there at the time," he said. "But my understanding of these facts is clearly there was no false record made."
"It's not a contribution to his campaign," Tacopina added. "He made this with personal funds to prevent something coming out false but embarrassing to himself and his family's young son. That's not a campaign finance violation, not by any stretch. So personal funds, and personal use of funds, spending to fulfill a commitment, an obligation or an expense of a person that would be existing, irrespective of the campaign, is not a violation, and that's what you have here."