The third witness in the criminal trial of Donald J. Trump is Gary Farro, a banker who is back on the stand Tuesday to testify about his work with Mr. Trump’s former lawyer and fixer on a $130,000 hush-money deal in 2016.
Mr. Farro spent 15 years at First Republic Bank, where he was a senior managing director, according to his LinkedIn profile. That now-defunct institution is where Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, established an account for Essential Consultants L.L.C., the entity he used to buy the silence of a porn star, Stormy Daniels, who claimed she had sex with Mr. Trump in 2006.
Mr. Cohen set up the account in October 2016 and funded it from his home-equity line of credit at First Republic. He has previously said he did so to ensure his wife would not know about the transaction. About two weeks before the 2016 presidential election, he wired the payment to Keith Davidson, a lawyer for Ms. Daniels.
In roughly an hour of testimony on Friday, Mr. Farro testified that Mr. Cohen had been eager to connect with him and wanted to open a limited liability company immediately. Mr. Farro testified that he took steps to open the account and specified with his team that Mr. Cohen didn’t want addresses on the checks.
“Every time Michael Cohen spoke to me, he gave me a sense of urgency,” Mr. Farro testified.
After the hush-money payment became public, Ms. Daniels’s lawyer at the time, Michael Avenatti, provided NBC News with an email to Mr. Cohen from an assistant to Mr. Farro confirming the transfer. Mr. Cohen had used his Trump Organization email address in the communications, but said at the time that company funds were not used.
According to NBC, the email, from Oct. 26, 2016, had the subject line, “First Republic Bank Transfer” and confirmed that “the funds have been deposited into your checking account.”
Mr. Trump has denied having had sex with Ms. Daniels.
