The lawyer, who is based in Beverly Hills, California, emphasised that he assumed Mr Trump was behind keeping Ms Daniels quiet in October 2016. Emails and text messages indicated that he and others believed the hush-money agreement with his former client helped Mr Trump win the presidency just a month later.

"What have we done?" Mr Davidson texted National Enquirer editor-in-chief Dylan Howard as the results rolled in on election night.

Asked to explain the message, Mr Davidson told the court: "There was an understanding that our efforts may have in some way… our activities may have in some way assisted the presidential campaign of Donald Trump."

During a second set of questions, prosecutor Joshua Steinglass played recordings of Mr Davidson and Cohen on the phone, "surreptitiously recorded" by Cohen.

In one recording, Cohen says that Mr Trump told him several times that he "hate[s] the fact that we did it". Mr Davidson testified that he was referencing Stormy Daniels' hush-money deal.

"But my comment to him is, 'but every person that we've spoken to told you it was the right move'," Mr Cohen adds in the recording.