The judge in Donald J. Trump’s criminal trial on Monday again refused to allow the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape to be played for jurors, but said that the comments Mr. Trump made on the tape could be introduced as evidence.
On the tape, revealed in The Washington Post about a month before Mr. Trump was elected president in 2016, he is heard bragging about grabbing women’s genitals, saying he could do so with abandon because “when you’re a star, they let you do it.”
“You can do anything,” Mr. Trump said on the recording.
The tape rocked Mr. Trump’s campaign. And prosecutors in Manhattan say it led him to agree to pay off Stormy Daniels, a porn star, who was shopping a story of a 2006 sexual encounter with the candidate.
Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former fixer, paid Ms. Daniels $130,000. The payment is at the heart of the 34 felony charges against Mr. Trump, who is accused of falsifying business records to cover it up.
The judge in the case, Juan M. Merchan, had previously ruled that prosecutors from the Manhattan district attorney’s office could question witnesses about the tape, but found that it would be prejudicial to allow the actual video to the played. He reaffirmed that ruling on Monday.
“You can bring out what was said in the tape,” Justice Merchan said, adding that he didn’t want jurors “to hear Mr. Trump’s voice and his gestures” in the tape.
In a victory for the defense, the judge also ruled that the prosecution could not introduce evidence about sexual assault allegations against Mr. Trump that surfaced in the aftermath of the tape becoming public, calling them “complete hearsay.”
However, Justice Merchan said that prosecutors could introduce emails that followed the tape’s disclosure, showing frantic efforts by Trump advisers to contain the fallout. The correspondence, he said, “bolsters the people’s claim that this was a crucial event.”
Todd Blanche, a lawyer for Mr. Trump, had called on Justice Merchan to reconsider admitting “this extremely salacious evidence,” which he described as “very prejudicial.”
