Michael Cohen to face powerful questioning from Trump’s legal professionals at hush cash trial

NEW YORK — Donald Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen awaits what guarantees to be a bruising cross-examination from the Republican presidential candidate’s legal professionals on Tuesday after testifying for about 9 hours over two days that Trump was intimately concerned in a hush cash plot to repay a porn star.

Cohen’s checkered historical past — he served time in federal jail for varied crimes, together with the hush cash cost, and has admittedly lied below oath — is a chief goal for Trump’s legal professionals, who’ve already forged him as a liar and convict who can’t be trusted.

Cohen, the prosecution’s star witness at Trump’s felony trial in New York, instructed jurors on Tuesday a few 2017 Oval Workplace assembly the place the newly elected president confirmed a plan to reimburse Cohen secretly for paying grownup movie actress Stormy Daniels to maintain quiet a few 2006 sexual encounter she says she had with Trump.

As soon as one among Trump’s most devoted lieutenants, Cohen additionally acknowledged mendacity on a number of events however emphasised that he did so out of loyalty to his boss, as prosecutors sought to pre-empt any protection assault on Cohen’s credibility.

In his first day as a witness on Monday, Cohen specified by painstaking element how Trump ordered him simply earlier than the November 2016 election to pay Daniels, lest her story harm his presidential marketing campaign.

Cohen’s $130,000 cost in October 2016 is on the coronary heart of Trump’s historic trial, now in its fifth week.

Trump, 77, the 2024 Republican presidential candidate, has pleaded not responsible and denies any sexual encounter with Daniels. He has characterised the case as a partisan try and intervene along with his marketing campaign to take again the White Home he misplaced in 2020 to Democratic President Joe Biden.

Prosecutors say Trump paid Cohen again after the election by creating false data indicating they have been for authorized charges. These disguised reimbursements present the premise for the 34 counts of falsifying enterprise data that Trump faces.

Cohen recounted on Tuesday an Oval Workplace assembly in February 2017 the place Trump instructed him that Cohen would quickly obtain the primary month-to-month installments of a bonus bundle, which Cohen mentioned included reimbursements for the Daniels cost.

Prosecutor Susan Hoffinger walked Cohen via a sequence of invoices and checks — some signed by Trump himself — that Cohen mentioned have been falsely marked as paying to retain him for authorized companies.

“There was no retainer settlement, was there?” Hoffinger requested.

“No, ma’am,” Cohen replied.

Cohen, 57, mentioned he lied a number of occasions to Congress throughout an investigation into Trump’s Russia ties, finally pleading responsible to perjury. He additionally instructed jurors he lied repeatedly concerning the cost to Daniels, telling journalists Trump had no involvement.

In 2018, after the Justice Division started investigating the Daniels cost, FBI brokers raided Cohen’s dwelling. He mentioned he referred to as Trump in a panic.

“He mentioned to me, ‘Don’t be concerned, I am the president of the US … you are going to be OK,'” Cohen mentioned. That was the final time they spoke instantly, Cohen added.

As an alternative, Cohen testified, a lawyer named Robert Costello who was near Trump adviser Rudy Giuliani provided a “again channel” to Trump. In emails proven to jurors, Costello handed alongside Giuliani’s assurances that he had “associates in excessive locations.”

In the meantime, Trump was defending Cohen on social media and decrying the concept that he would possibly “flip” and cooperate with prosecutors.

All of it added as much as a “strain marketing campaign” to maintain Cohen in line, he mentioned. However he finally determined to cooperate after talking along with his household.

Cohen pleaded responsible to federal crimes in 2018, together with offenses associated to the Daniels cost, and mentioned Trump — who was not charged — directed him to make the cost.

“I remorse doing issues for him that I mustn’t have — mendacity, bullying individuals with a purpose to effectuate a purpose,” Cohen mentioned when requested to mirror on his a few years working for Trump. “To maintain the loyalty and to do the issues that he requested me to do, I violated my ethical compass. And I suffered the penalty — as has my household.”

‘A complete catastrophe’

A day after a number of Republican lawmakers attended the trial in help of Trump, U.S. Home Speaker Mike Johnson joined him and later criticized the case exterior the court docket.

Whereas Cohen testified on Tuesday, a mid-level appeals court docket denied Trump’s newest effort to throw out a gag order that Trump asserted violated his proper to free speech.

The order, imposed by Justice Juan Merchan, who’s overseeing the trial, prohibits Trump from making public feedback about jurors, witnesses, and households of the decide and prosecutors if meant to intervene with the case.

On Monday, Cohen mentioned Trump accredited a number of funds to maintain damaging sex-scandal tales out of the general public eye, lest they torpedo his presidential marketing campaign.

“All the pieces required Mr. Trump’s sign-off,” Cohen mentioned.

Cohen mentioned that he, Trump and tabloid writer David Pecker had secretly agreed in 2015 to assist Trump’s marketing campaign.

That association included a $150,000 cost from Pecker’s firm to former Playboy mannequin Karen McDougal to purchase her story a few yearlong affair she mentioned she had with Trump, Cohen mentioned. Trump has additionally denied that relationship.

As with Daniels, the intent was to accumulate the rights to the story solely to bury it, a follow Pecker referred to as “catch and kill.”

In October 2016, Cohen mentioned, he realized Daniels was purchasing her story to tabloids. On the time, the Trump marketing campaign was in disaster mode after the discharge of an audio recording by which Trump bragged about grabbing ladies’s genitals.

“He mentioned to me, ‘It is a catastrophe, a complete catastrophe. Ladies are going to hate me,'” Cohen instructed jurors Trump had mentioned.

Cohen testified that Trump was solely involved concerning the affect Daniels’ story may have on his White Home bid — and never, as Trump’s legal professionals have steered, concerning the impact on his spouse and household. That distinction is essential to the prosecution’s case.

Beneath New York legislation, falsifying enterprise data could be elevated from a misdemeanor to a felony if the crime helped conceal one other offense. In Trump’s case, prosecutors have argued that the cost was successfully a secret contribution to his marketing campaign, violating federal and state legal guidelines.

The Manhattan trial is taken into account much less consequential than three different felony prosecutions Trump faces, all of that are mired in delays.

The opposite instances cost Trump with making an attempt to overturn his 2020 presidential defeat and mishandling categorised paperwork after leaving workplace. Trump pleaded not responsible to all three.