Trump hush-money trial information: Michael Cohen begins third day of testimony

Blanche: In your e-book, you described the tax evasion costs had been “bogus” and “100 per cent inaccurate”?

“I used to be referring to once more the identical factor.”

You additionally stated on TikTok as just lately as April 1 of this yr that the federal investigation towards you was “corrupt”?

On CNN final yr, you stated that the “lies by the SDNY towards me for tax evasion, I hope all of it comes out”?

Objection. Prosecutor Susan Hoffinger asks to strategy.

Cohen seems to be at what we’re instructed is a transcript of his CNN interview

Blanche right here is making an attempt to undercut Cohen’s testimony that he lied on Trump’s behalf, by citing tax costs that didn’t have something to do with Trump. However Cohen isn’t suggesting that he lied concerning the crimes he dedicated in that case, he simply doesn’t assume he ought to’ve been charged.

Cohen is explaining how taxi medallions work in New York after Blanche means that Gene Freidman was his enterprise associate.

He leased medallions. Cohen says it’s no totally different than a tenant/landlord relationship. He didn’t care concerning the enterprise.

(Freidman was cooperating with the feds towards him)

This got here up in direct examination, and within the civil fraud trial, the place Cohen was accused of perjury after pleading responsible within the tax case:

Cohen had “48 hours to just accept the plea or the SDNY was going to file an 80-page indictment that included my spouse, so I elected to guard my household.” He “by no means denied the underlying info, I simply didn’t consider I ought to have been criminally charged” for these two offences.

You felt that you simply had been induced or put below stress to plead responsible since you had simply two days? A threat that your beloved can be indicted as nicely?

“That’s what I used to be instructed’

Did the federal government ever let you know that?

“No, they spoke with my lawyer”

The one foundation was your lawyer?

Blanche is as soon as once more suggesting that Cohen was mendacity to Decide Pauley when he instructed the choose that no one had induced him to plead responsible.

Blanche teeing up a mighty yes-only query tree earlier than stepping into on Cohen’s first testimony to Congress, which he admitted to mendacity to:

“The oath that you simply took each single time, going again to all of the depositions, the identical oath you took on Monday morning? … Requested to do the identical factor each time? Put your proper hand up? Swear to inform the reality? … When there are occasions like now when your testimony lasts longer than a day… you’re nonetheless below oath? … So along with the instances you testified below oath … you additionally met with federal brokers I consider someplace round 17 instances, does that sound correct? Every time you met with a federal agent, that every time you made a false assertion that was a felony?”

“You lied below oath, and also you lied, you dedicated one other felony [prosecution objects, sustained], you lied while you met with the particular counsel, right?”

Cohen as soon as once more seems comparatively relaxed, shoulders sunken, leaning ahead simply barely in direction of the mic.

Once more, that is all stuff he admitted to, below direct examination — prosecutors addressed this all head-on, however protection needs to remind jurors that he lied below oath and that ought to imply he’s not reliable.

Blanche is doing a horrible job of creating a timeline — We began in 2023, went again to 2017, then November 2018, and now August 2018.

About Trump’s “horseface” put up:

Blanche: You responded to this Fact [Truth Social post], didn’t you?

Cohen: “I’m not on Fact, sir.”

You don’t have a recollection of responding on X to that Fact?

You referred to as President Trump a reputation proper again, right?

You referred to as him dumbass Donald?

Cohen acknowledges {that a} paralegal has been assigned to observe his social media.

“However that didn’t cease you?”

Reader, he did name him “dumbass Donald”:

And we lastly hear in court docket Cohen’s podcast voice. The protection entered into proof a recording of him celebrating Trump’s indictment.

He thanks the Manhattan DA’s workplace and “fearless chief Alvin Bragg with whom I spent numerous hours” laying out the hush cash scheme, he says on the recording.

“He’s about to get a style of what I went via and I promise it’s not enjoyable,” he says. Picturing Trump going via the reserving course of “fills me with delight and unhappiness all on the similar time … what a humiliation it’s to the workplace of the presidency.”

(Cohen admits he by no means truly met with Bragg himself.)

In one other podcast clip heard in court docket: “I really f***ing hope this man results in jail … Revenge is a dish greatest served chilly.”

He says he hopes Trump will “rot inside for what he did to me and my household.”

You stated, did you not, that you simply consider the work you probably did performed a big function within the prosecutors’ indictment of this case?

Sure, that’s what I consider.

It’s not in proof however the alternate appears to be Rosenberg telling Cohen concerning the article, not concerning the indictment itself.

Blanche is making an attempt to suggest the DA’s workplace gave the newspaper and Cohen a heads-up earlier than the indictment was unsealed to the general public.

Blanche is repeatedly making an attempt to ask whether or not Rosenberg instructed Cohen that Trump was being indicted or that he confirmed his indictment after The New York Occasions reported it earlier than it was unsealed.

A number of sustained objections.

Blanche: Could I strategy, your honor?