Payments from the actor Charlie Sheen to keep women silent. Rumors that the Hollywood star Lindsay Lohan was in rehab. A lawsuit by Hulk Hogan, the former pro wrestler, against the gossip website Gawker for publishing a tape of him having sex.
Testimony on Thursday at former President Donald J. Trump’s trial in Manhattan dove deeply into the celebrity-obsessed digital media environment of the past decade that helped fuel Mr. Trump’s rise to political prominence.
The lurid tales were introduced to the jury largely through the witness Keith Davidson, a Los Angeles lawyer who specialized in getting money for clients who had dirt on famous people. In his testimony, Mr. Davidson led the jurors on a whirlwind tour of several of the gossipy and seamy deals he had a hand in while representing clients.
Mr. Davidson had already a spent a day and a half on the stand talking about he how had helped to broker deals for Karen McDougal, a Playboy model, and the porn star Stormy Daniels, whose claims against Mr. Trump are at the center of the trial.
But during cross-examination by Emil Bove, a lawyer for Mr. Trump, Mr. Davidson came under fierce questioning about several former clients and the arrangements they had reached with celebrities. Mr. Bove suggested that Mr. Davidson had tried to “extract” money from the boldface names his clients knew — a word that Mr. Davidson seemed to take offense at.
The purpose of Mr. Bove’s interrogation appeared to be to suggest to the jury that Ms. McDougal and Ms. Daniels may have sought to extract their own payments from Mr. Trump. But making that point required Mr. Bove to drag Mr. Davidson through some old patches of mud.
And so the jury heard about a “sex-tape broker” whom Mr. Davidson worked with while handling a video that featured a client, the reality TV star Tila Tequila.
The jurors also heard — at least a little — about how Mr. Davidson helped another client wrest a $2 million payment out of Mr. Sheen after she had claimed that “tortious activity,” as Mr. Davidson put it, had been committed.
“So you extracted sums of money from Charlie Sheen?” Mr. Bove asked.
“There was no extraction,” Mr. Davidson said.
Mr. Bove tried again: “You got Mr. Sheen to pay?”
Mr. Davidson refused to answer this time.
“That settlement would be confidential and I wouldn’t it discuss it here,” he said.