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Asked about the call during defence lawyer Emil Bove’s cross-examination, Mr Davidson said: “I thought he was going to kill himself.”
The jury was also played three clips from an audio of a conversation that Mr Cohen had secretly recorded when he was speaking to Mr Richardson.
“Nobody’s thinking about Michael”, Mr Cohen said in the recording.
He added: “I’m sitting there and I’m saying to myself, ‘what about me? What about me?’”
Referring to Mr Trump, Mr Cohen said: “I can’t even tell you how many times he said to me ‘I hate the fact that we did it’.”
Mr Davidson clarified that Cohen was speaking about the deal between Ms Daniels and Mr Trump.
Technical details
The court was also given an insight into how Mr Davidson helped craft cleverly worded denials of Mr Trump’s affair with Ms Daniels.
In one statement issued on Jan 10 2018 Ms Daniels said claims she and Mr Trump had a “sexual and/or romantic affair” were “absolutely false”.
Mr Davidson, who prepared the statement, said “an extremely strict reading” of the denial would show it was “technically true”.
Asked how it is “technically correct”, Mr Davidson said: “I think you’d have to hone in on the definition of romantic, sexual and affair.”
He added: “I don’t think anyone had ever alleged that any interaction between she and Mr Trump was romantic”.
A second denial stated the pair had never had a “sexual relationship”. Mr Davidson said a relationship implies something that goes on for an extended period of time.
He also claims the denials of “hush money” payments were technically correct, as he would “never” use that term.
Rather, he said, he would refer to the $130,000 pay-off to keep Ms Daniels quiet as a “consideration”.
Mr Davidson is seen as a critical building block for the prosecution’s case that Mr Trump and his allies hatched a “catch and kill” scheme to bury negative stories in the run up to the 2016 presidential election.
He represented both adult movie star Ms Daniels and Ms McDougal in negotiations that resulted in the rights to their claims of sexual encounters.
The jury was also shown a text message Mr Davidson sent to Dylan Howard, the former National Enquirer editor, at 3am on election night, saying: “What have we done?”
Mr Howard responded: “Oh my god.”
Asked about what he meant, Mr Davidson said it had been “gallows humour”.
“There was an understanding that our efforts may have in some way – strike that – our activities may have in some way assisted the presidential campaign of Donald Trump,” Mr Davidson told the court.
The jury was also played a recording of a conversation between Cohen and Mr Trump, during which Cohen says: “I need to open up a company for the transfer about our friend David.”
The David he is referring to appears to be David Pecker, the tabloid boss who agreed to be Mr Trump’s “eyes and ears” in the run-up to the 2016 election.
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