Donald Trump is currently on trial — criminal trial, not civil — not for paying hush money to his mistresses that he had while Melania was pregnant with his son, but because that “hush money” was used to better his chances in the 2016 election.

See, paying someone off to keep a thing from your wife, as abhorrent as this is, is legal. Using it to win an election is not.

During the current trial, and I stress current because he has a number of them upcoming, his former junior accountant, Rebecca Manochio testified that she was instructed to send checks to his bodyguard Keith Schiller, but that she didn’t know why.

That’s a thing bookkeepers need to know. You would think a bookkeeper would also know what a controller is, but this is someone who worked for Trump. So she was probably hired for her looks rather than her business and/or accounting acumen.

New witness: Rebecca Manochio

She works at Trump Org. She was the assistant to ex-CFO Allen Weisselberg and also worked under ex-Controller Jeff McConney.

"What is a controller?" Prosecutors ask.

"I'm not really sure," she replies. pic.twitter.com/OqG1b5m5OS

— Erik Uebelacker (@Uebey) May 9, 2024

And now that I’ve used my favorite (and only, in English) word that has three sets of double letters in a row, I feel like it’s appropriate to say that if you’re telling your accountant to send checks to someone that normally doesn’t get their checks from you, it might raise questions.

Manochio, who worked in the Trump Organization in 2017 and before, testified on Thursday that she was told by the who’s-who in the T.O. that she was to mail the checks to Schiller. Her lack of information, not the testimony itself, is what will come around to bite Trump.

She actually sounds like she’s trying to PROTECT the former president.

That’s not going to be possible when Trump is an adjudicated rapist with a history of lying. I feel bad for her, but if she picked Team Trump, she’s gonna get a dodgeball to the face in this trial, because everyone knows he’s guilty, including her.

Trump’s pleaded not guilty to 34 COUNTS (all felonies) regarding falsifying financial documents surrounding his hush money payment to both Stormy Daniels, AKA Stephanie Clifford, an adult film star, and Karen McDougal, a Playboy centerfold that he allegedly had a nearly year-long affair with during his wife’s pregnancy.

The admission by Manochio may have been intended as an attempt to shield Trump, or possibly avoid violating some non-disclosure order with HER that we just haven’t seen news of yet, but either way, it still paints Trump as a villain, as usual.