Trump has long been known as a micromanager. Prosecutors are using this against him.

At Donald J. Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan, his lawyers insisted that he had “nothing to do” with any of the criminal charges against him.

But testimony from prosecution witnesses in recent weeks has called that argument into question, underscoring that Mr. Trump can be obsessive about two very important aspects of his job: anything to do with the media and anything to do with with your work. money.

The 34 documents at the heart of the prosecution’s case relate to both obsessions.

The Manhattan district attorney says Trump orchestrated the disguise of 11 checks, 11 invoices and 12 accounting entries to continue the cover-up of a damaging story, paying his former agent $420,000 in the process. And testimony about Trump’s management style could play a central role as prosecutors seek to convince the jury that there is no world in which Trump is not tracking money leaving his accounts.

The prosecutors’ strategy illustrates the risk of a criminal trial for Trump, one of the most famous men in the world, whose character and habits are familiar even to those who have not followed his every move. The Manhattan district attorney accused him of orchestrating the falsification of 34 documents to cover up a clandestine payment to a porn star, Stormy Daniels.

David Pecker, former editor of The National Enquirer and the trial’s first witness, worked with Trump for decades, the two men trading favors as each tried to make headlines. Asked about Trump’s qualities as a businessman, Pecker described him “as a micromanager, from what I’ve seen,” adding that “he looked at every aspect of whatever the problem was.”

The prosecutor who questioned Pecker next asked about Trump’s approach to money. “He was very cautious and very frugal,” Pecker responded.

Prosecutors have a mountain of documentary evidence, but none of it directly links Trump himself to the scheme. Yet witness after witness highlighted some of the former president’s most famous traits — some of which Trump himself promoted for decades — painting a portrait of a man prosecutors say could have had no help other than overseeing a secret payment. to avoid a harmful story.

It’s unclear whether jurors will accept that narrative. Only one witness, former fixer Michael D. Cohen, is expected to testify to having direct knowledge of Trump instructing his subordinates to falsify documents. And one employee, Deborah Tarasoff, said Trump did not closely supervise his work, testifying that he typically operated through at least two levels of middle management.

But the court has already heard from old friends and former employees about how Trump’s tendencies influenced the culture of his company, the Trump Organization, where he first perfected his management style.

Hope Hicks, Trump’s former spokeswoman, described it in her testimony as a “very large and successful company.” But she noted that “it was really run like a small family business.”

“Everyone who works there,” she said, “in some sense reports to Mr. Trump.”

Tarasoff’s former manager, Jeffrey McConney, told a story that may have pleased prosecutors. He said that early in his career at the Trump Organization, he walked into his boss’s office and Mr. Trump — in the middle of a phone conversation — told him, “You’re fired.”

As soon as he hung up the phone, McConney said, Trump took it away. But he warned his new employee to watch the accounts closely, noting that “cash balances fell last week.”

“He said, ‘Now focus on my bills,’” McConney recalled. “It was a teaching moment. Just because someone is asking for money, negotiate with them, talk to them.” Don’t simply hand over the money “without thinking”.

McConney’s testimony was corroborated Tuesday by an unusual witness: an earlier version of Trump himself.

Sally Franklin, editor-in-chief of Penguin Random House, was called to the witness stand to read aloud passages from two of Trump’s books in which he described himself as a meticulous janitor who monitors the minutiae of his business.

“I always sign my checks, so I know where my money goes,” he wrote in one of the excerpts read aloud in court. In another, Trump boasted about cashing a 50-cent check sent to him by Spy magazine as a joke. (Spy Magazine sent Mr. Trump tiny checks in decreasing denominations, the lowest being 13 cents; none were for 50 cents.)

“They might call it cheap; I call it watching the bottom line,” he wrote in the book. “Every dollar counts in business and, for that matter, every penny. A penny pinching? You bet. I’m all for it.”

Prosecutors hope it’s hard to imagine the perpetrator shelling out $420,000 for no good reason.

In interviews, former aides said that while Trump’s focus didn’t apply to everything, he was attentive to any element of his business or personality that the public might see, from images to advertising copy and statements to the press.

Jack O’Donnell, a former Trump casino executive, recalled Trump late one night warning a maintenance worker who was polishing the marble floor of one of the casinos – Trump told the worker he was using the chemical wrong. Alan Marcus, a former consultant to the Trump Organization, described Mr. Trump providing feedback on the language of a television commercial that opposed a rival casino tunnel project in Atlantic City, and on withdrawing the ads when they became controversial.

Barbara Res, a former Trump Organization executive who oversaw some of Trump’s most prominent construction projects, including Trump Tower, said the boss had no real knowledge of skyscraper construction before this project. But she said when it came to specific superficial details, he often tried to impose his will.

This included insisting, despite building code requirements, that he did not want Braille buttons on his elevators. “He said, ‘We’re not going to have people with disabilities living in Trump Tower, so we don’t need it,’” she recalled. The architect working on the project rejected it.

Trump himself described this trend in another book excerpt read in court, writing: “When you are working with a decorator, ask to see all the invoices. Decorators are honest people by nature, but you should double-check anyway.

Res described a culture where Trump’s desires were so well known that people often did things to please him without him saying a word, paraphrasing one version of what Cohen said.

“We knew Trump so well that he didn’t need to say anything, we knew what he wanted,” said Res. “I never did anything illegal and stopped him from demolishing a building without a permit. But others did.”

There were also indications during the trial of Trump’s tendency to insert himself — to micromanage — when the stakes are high. Ms. Hicks, the former spokeswoman, told a story that suggested her former boss’s interest in coordinating secret payments, even if he didn’t deign to get directly involved.

Back then, Trump famously didn’t text. But Mrs. Hicks did. In the deposition, she described a text message she had sent to Mr. Cohen on November 5, 2016, days before the presidential election. Something prompted her to ask Mr. Cohen for Mr. Pecker’s phone number — even though she already had the publisher’s contact information.

“I get it,” she told Mr. Cohen apologetically. “But Mr. Trump thinks it’s the wrong number.”