Former president Donald Trump’s criminal defense team pressed ex-lawyer turned star witness Michael Cohen on Tuesday afternoon over Cohen’s history of lies and public criticisms of his old boss.
Cohen testified for the second straight day and detailed the reimbursements he received for the $130,000 payment he sent porn actress Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election to prevent her from speaking publicly with her allegations she and Trump had an affair. Trump has denied Daniels’s claims.
Trump’s former fixer is now a disbarred, convicted felon who pleaded guilty to perjury and various financial crimes connected to his work for Trump. Cohen emphasized during his testimony that he lied to protect Trump and falsified invoices for the reimbursements at the direction of former Trump organization’s chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg.
Defense attorney Todd Blanche began cross-examining Cohen by pointing to his anti-Trump public commentary and compared it to his past support for Trump, according to multiple reports.
“Do you want to see President Trump convicted in this case?” Blanche asked.
“Sure,” Cohen said. He gave the same response to a follow-up question seeking a yes or no answer.
Blanche repeatedly pressed Cohen about his anti-Trump remarks on social media and the anti-Trump merchandise he sells. The prosecution has asked Cohen to stop publicly commenting on the case, Cohen admitted.
“At that time, I was knee-deep into the cult of Donald Trump, yes,” Cohen testified.
Cohen said he admired Trump and denied having an obsession. He confirmed he missed Trump in 2017 and answered affirmatively when asked if he felt the Trump family was his surrogate family.
Blanche also asked Cohen about the discredited Steele Dossier’s false allegation that Cohen took a trip to Prague as part of the Trump campaign’s supposed collusion with Russia. Cohen said the Steele Dossier had turned his life upside down. This aspect of Blanche’s cross-examination focused on whether Cohen lied to special counsel Robert Mueller during his investigation of Trump-Russia collusion claims. Cohen appeared to admit to giving Mueller inaccurate information.
“Once you testified in February of 2019 you changed all that and you now said President Trump was a con man and you were ashamed?” Blanche asked point-blank.
“I said that, yes,” Cohen replied.
After he turned against Trump, Cohen became a prominent critic of his former boss and sold two books, including a memoir about his time working for Trump. Cohen said he earned roughly $3.4 million from those books.
Long before his testimony, Cohen began cooperating with the district attorney’s office on the Trump case, but Cohen said he has never met Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg in person. Bragg is an elected Democrat who typically takes a soft-on-crime, progressive approach.
The proceedings wrapped late Tuesday afternoon, and Cohen’s cross-examination will resume on Thursday.
Tuesday night, Trump will be fundraising in Manhattan with former Republican presidential rivals Doug Burgum and Vivek Ramaswamy, National Review’s Audrey Falhberg reported. Trump is the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee.
Bragg is prosecuting Trump on 34 counts for allegedly falsifying business records and allegedly doing so to conceal campaign finance crimes. Federal prosecutors are not currently pursuing a campaign finance case against Trump.
The prosecution is painting Cohen’s payment to Daniels as part of a broader conspiracy to influence the 2016 presidential election. Earlier in the day, Trump criticized Bragg for “election interference” against him and received support from an ensemble of Republican politicians.